Sweating the Vetting of a Co-op Sublet
Dec. 10, 2015 — When I got word that my landlord was not going to renew my lease on the condo apartment I’d been renting for the past six years in Alphabet City, I got busy. My hunt brought me eventually to a lovely one-bedroom apartment with a terrace and knockout views of midtown and downtown Manhattan, for about the same rent I’d been paying for my apartment across the street from a housing project in Alphabet City. There was just one hitch: the building was a co-op, which meant, for the first time in my life, I would have to undergo a co-op’s vetting process for subletters.
This, as I was about to learn, was no ordinary co-op. This was Seward Park, a sprawling, high-rise complex on 13 acres of the Lower East Side of Manhattan that opened in 1959 as a way of alleviating crowded slum conditions. Today it’s home to some 5,000 people in 1,728 apartments. At any given time, about 100 of those units – fewer than 10 percent – are occupied by subletters.
After I handed over a deposit check equal to one month’s rent to get the listing taken off the market, the broker e-mailed me the co-op’s sublet application. I was stunned. The document was 77 pages long – about half of it devoted to house rules and arcane stuff about lead-based paint disclosures and smoke detectors. But the other half of the application was a way of holding a magnifying glass up to my financial profile and my personality. The board would be looking into standard things like my credit report, criminal and litigation background, checking and savings accounts, and personal tax return with W-2 form for the most recent calendar year. The board also wanted reference letters from my employer and landlord, plus two personal and two business reference letters. In a lifetime of renting apartments, I had never been so closely scrutinized. In the Alphabet City condo apartment I rented, for example, I had dealt only with the apartment’s owner, who was willing to overlook my less-than-stellar credit rating by demanding a two-months security deposit.
As I continued reading the application, my eyes began to bulge. The vetting process included more than $800 in non-refundable fees. As an added bonus, if my financial condition were deemed satisfactory, I would have to appear in person before the co-op board’s screening committee.
I wound up paying the fees, sweating out the vetting process, passing the board interview, and finally winning approval as a subletter. After I’d moved in, I sat down with Seward Park’s on-site property manager, Frank Durant, who told me that the vetting process I’d been through was far less onerous than it is at some co-ops.
“Some co-ops visit the apartment where the applicant is living,” Durant said. “They check how the applicant lives. That’s crazy. We don’t do that. I think our process, even though it’s more restrictive than rental or condo apartments, is appropriate for this community.”
Everything is relative. The vetting process I went through seemed invasive, but I now realize it could have been much worse. And I’m glad I sweated my way through it – because I love my new apartment.