A Condop?

See http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk+cond-op

it is a co-op in structure that behaves more like a condo in regards to policy. you are buying shares in a corporation and getting a proprietary lease, like a coop.

But doesn't it sometimes mean something entirely different -- a plain jane coop, but with the retail & commercial set up as a separate or semi-separate condo?

.

Two usages:

1) As UD said, a regular co-op, but one whose bylaws and house rules are more condo-like.

2) As alanhart said, a regular co-op, whose owned property is a condo unit. The condo sponsor creates a condo with two or three units, selling the residential unit to a co-op and keeping the other one or two for retail. Allows the sponsor to retain the retail without having to lease from the co-op.

A buyer should determine what is meant by the term in the particular instance.

I think the latter arrangement was also used, until last year when the law changed, to circumvent the 80/20 tax requirement that limited a coop's operating income from nonresidential rents to 20% max.

Right. When a building was retail-heavy, made perfect sense at the time.

Take a close look at the building's financials, because sometimes you get case #1 when the developer would have preferred a condo but had to work with a land lease -- the Marais on West 23rd is a good example of this.

If there is a land lease involved, the prices are often a little cheaper to compensate for the risk of the lease.

ali r.
"Ask the Agent" at CBS Moneywatch.com: bit.ly/12afCB

My condop is really a coop, but it operates for all intents and purposes exactly like a coop. The apartments are one condo unit, the parking garage another, and the retail stores comprise the third. This is a fairly common arrangement in condops established in the 70s or 80s and also fairly unremarkable. It hasn't anything, in such cases, to do with land leases (which I personally would not get involved with for reasons discussed on other threads).