The Clock Might Start Ticking on Co-op Sales

Barry Kramer, a Westchester County real-estate broker, is president-elect of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors and also the long-time board president at the Northgate co-op in Scarsdale. He has strong feelings about laws now before the New York City Council and General Assembly that seek to speed up the application process for people trying to buy co-op apartments.

Kramer says he has seen boards keep buyers waiting for months before even inviting them for an interview. And, he adds, he’s seen sellers get hurt by the process as well.

“I had a senior citizen who owned a co-op she was trying to sell in New Rochelle,” Kramer recalls. “She had several buyers rejected. She had no clue why they were being rejected. Finally, she simply [died]. It took so long.”

The New York State Association of Realtors backs the bills that would require boards to reach a decision within 45 days of receiving a complete admissions package. A bill pending in the senate would go further – requiring boards that reject a purchaser to disclose a reason, something that is rarely done now.

New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, a Democrat representing Brooklyn’s 39th District, is sponsoring similar legislation before the City Council. He views mandatory disclosure as a way of combatting discrimination. “I have only heard a handful of stories about discrimination, but [that’s] enough to [make me] believe that it’s out there,” Lander says.

But there has been pushback. Arthur Weinstein, an attorney who represents many co-ops and sits on the board of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, counters: “The laws already on the books have 16 grounds for prohibited discrimination with three agencies able to enforce them.” (Federal, state, and city laws prohibit housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status, disability, age, military status, and other characteristics.) Requiring co-op boards to provide reasons for rejecting an applicant would open them up to litigation and could strike at the very heart of what makes communal living work, Weinstein argues. 

Michael T. Manzi, a partner in the law firm of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, agrees that boards need to be able to make decisions freely and without fear of embarrassment. “They don’t want to be in the position of having to say to someone, ‘We rejected you because we didn’t like you,’ ” he says.

Further, Manzi argues, requiring boards to explain rejections is unlikely to have any impact on true discriminatory behavior. No board is going to come out and say they’re discriminating, he points out, “unless they’re complete idiots. They’re going to find some other reason.”

Besides, a strong deterrent is already in place, Manzi notes: the knowledge that individual board members could be held personally liable for any discriminatory actions, a precedent set by the notorious decision in the case involving Nick Biondi and his board, who had to pay out thousands of dollars in a discrimination suit involving a sublet application.