is there an easy way to know if a coop has a ground lease/land lease?

if the prices are unusually low and the maintenances are unusually high, chances are it is land lease.

thanks, but is there a way of confirming the info and not conjecturing?

Go to ACRIS and see who owns the land. If it is not the Coop Corporaiotn, there is a Ground Lease. Also, under most circumstances, there should be a Memorandum of Lease recorded that you should be able to see at ACRIS.

Great, so a Memorandum of Lease = ground lease?

A Memorandum could also be of a lease between the co-op and a retail tenant, so you need to dig.

Further to what leasinglawyer said, in ACRIS you can look at any UCC1 to get the co-op's name, then search on that name. That way you don't have to scroll through years worth of UCCx's and stuff. If you don't see a deed between the co-op and a sponsor, then a memorandum of lease should turn up. (It's a memorandum, not the lease itself, so as to not make a public record of the really interesting terms.)