do co-ops exist in new york city which permit unlimited subletting
we'll demystify this topic in the following video i'm Nick at Hauseit visit
hauseit.com to learn how to save money if you're buying selling or renting real
estate in new york city long island the hudson valley or south florida so let's
get started
so do co-ops exist in new york city which permit unlimited subletting
well the answer is yes there are a handful of co-op buildings in new york
city which do allow unlimited subletting now some of them may require you to live
in the building for an initial occupancy period perhaps up to one year maybe two
years and thereafter you may be allowed unlimited subletting
but why are we asking this question what's wrong with condos why are you
looking for co-ops which allow unlimited subletting
well the long and short of it is that co-ops in new york city are anywhere
from 10 to 40 percent less expensive so even if you're looking for an investment
property ideally a condo you soon realize that perhaps they're a little
bit too expensive doesn't work for your parameters of your investment criteria
and as a result you ask the question are there co-ops with unlimited subletting
so the answer is yes now
the question therefore is how do you find them
what we'll say in new york city is that there really is no central database or
repository of information which gives us enough detail about buildings and their
subletting policies across the city so there's no way currently to filter
buildings by sublet policy because of the fact that
a there are so many different varieties of subletting policies and it's not just
like yes or no to subletting it could be you
know two out of every five years it could be a lifetime cap of one year or a
lifetime cap of two years it's just not conducive to there being any sort of
searchable database and in addition if you're in the
business or as you start looking for apartments you'll soon realize that
arguably co-ops and condos in new york city are pretty disorganized when it
comes to the paperwork for the buildings and by that we mean
you know let's say the co-op has a policy
the policy was put in place when the building first became a co-op that was
40 years ago well they've changed the policy since then maybe they changed it
two years ago maybe there was just a shareholder vote three months ago but
the building probably still hasn't even updated their official sublet policy nor
have they probably even updated the sublet application for the building so
there's a really no way to categorize the information and b the information
itself is routinely out of date because co-ops are pretty slow to get organized
in the city anyhow so back to that question how do you find a co-op with
unlimited subletting we've already established that there's no way to
efficiently search for them using any sort of drop down or existing filter
that being said the best way to do it is pretty much to use a keyword search on
third-party real estate websites for example you can search for
the phrase unlimited subletting and hopefully that will search through all
the listing descriptions and it may pull up a handful of you know co-ops that
have unlimited subletting now the key is you're going to have to
be creative with the terms you search for and the portals you search on
because the search algorithms are not all made equally across the various
sites so it's a little tougher to find but rest assured if you are looking for
one and you're insistent on it you will be able to find one that being said we
do want to implore you to think a little bit about whether or not you should
actually buy a co-op with unlimited subletting if your objective is to buy
an investment property and here's why rules in buildings can change as we
alluded to so a building that allows unlimited subletting today
could change that tomorrow and prohibit
subletting altogether or they could implement a cap so instead
of it being unlimited it's now say two out of every five years in either of
these two cases you're going to have to sell the property at some point and
that's going to cost you money you're going to have to pay seller closing
costs and so forth and the third risk with a co-op that permits unlimited
subletting is that hey they could raise the fee for
subletting now co-ops typically do charge some sort of annual fee
for the privilege of subletting and the risk is you know let's say a couple of
apartments turn over in the building the composition of the board changes and a
couple people move in uh you know who feel like they own the place who feel
like they own the whole building and they don't like investors so they'll
start putting things in motion that will either make it
impossible and not allowed for you to sublet or b they'll basically tax you to
strongly discourage you from doing it in the hopes that you eventually sell
so if you are looking for an investment property be mindful of the fact that you
don't have any long-term guarantees that you'll be allowed to sublet in
perpetuity with a co-op even if they do allow it at the time of your original
purchase so we hope you found this video to be
helpful we can help save you money here at household if you're buying selling or
renting real estate in new york city you can learn how by visiting houseit.com
that's Hauseit with an a. I'm Nick at Hauseit and we hope to see you on the
next one