Do you own a co-op in New York City or are you thinking about buying a cop in New York City? Selling or buying a co-op comes with its own unique set of factors. The most important one is timing your ability to control that process is dependent on the management company and the co-op board. Despite the fact they may have timelines that say “we'll review this in three weeks”, the fact of the matter is you have no ability to actually control that, and that is why the New York State Association of Realtors are going to Albany on May 2nd with what's being called the Co-op Transparency Bill.

It is meant to combat the illegal discrimination that occurs in the cooperative housing purchase process here in New York, and how they're planning to do that is by creating a clear timeline of when people need to hear a response. Failure to hear that timeline could result in automatic consent for the person to be able to buy the apartment. It is an anathema to me in the business world you can have a situation where you have absolutely no control over the timing. It affects the seller, and it affects the buyer because if it takes three, four, five months then the seller's back to square one and the buyers back to square one if the whole thing does not work out. Whether or not this bill goes anywhere I don't know, but fact that it's being raised or being presented is a good thing for sellers and buyers of co-ops in New York.