Standard co-ops in Brooklyn

Which co-op buildings of this kind are actually in Brooklyn?

• Brownstone and limestone corporations in Park Slope, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights, frequently four to twelve units and run by the shareholders themselves
• Large post-war complexes near Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, several of which began as limited-equity or Mitchell-Lama developments
• Pre-war elevator buildings along Eastern Parkway, Ocean Avenue and Shore Road that converted in the 1980s
• Newer small conversions in Bushwick and Crown Heights where the corporation is only a few years old and has no operating history

What do board approval and financing look like in Brooklyn?

• A self-managed corporation has no managing agent to assemble the board package, so the requirements arrive by email from a shareholder and change between sales
• Lenders read a small corporation’s financials for reserve adequacy, underlying mortgage terms and the number of units in arrears, and a four-unit building has no room to absorb one delinquency
• Some Brooklyn corporations still carry an underlying mortgage large enough that its refinance date, not the shareholder’s loan, is the number that moves maintenance
• The large southern-shore complexes run scheduled board meetings, which sets the timeline: a package that misses a cut-off waits for the next cycle

Which taxes and recording steps apply in Brooklyn?

• No mortgage recording tax on the share loan and no ACRIS instrument for the purchase, the same as any co-op
• New York State transfer tax and the New York City real property transfer tax apply to the share transfer
• The mansion tax is reached on a meaningful minority of Brooklyn co-op sales, concentrated in the brownstone belt rather than the southern-shore complexes
• Judgment and lien searches run against Kings County records, which is the busiest civil filing county in the city

What pattern does a purchaser meet in Brooklyn?

• A small self-managed corporation may have no written house rules, no alteration agreement and no reserve study, and the review has to work from minutes instead
• Flip taxes appear less consistently than in Manhattan, and where they exist in a small building they were often adopted by a shareholder vote that has to be produced
• Coastal complexes near Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay sit in flood zones, so the corporation’s flood coverage and any post-storm assessment history belong in the review
• Landmarked districts in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Clinton Hill add a Landmarks review to facade and window work the corporation may have deferred

What else should you read before closing on one of these?