In contract for co-op that is really a condop. Downside?

Residential as co-op and commercial as condo is not all that unusual in a condop. If the financials of the building are solid, there really shouldn't be anything to worry about.

I would check the land lease situation (does one entity maybe lease it from the other to hide the fact that it's a land lease?)

Switch attorneys if he's never seen one like this before. They're very common in NYC.

That seems like good advice, #4. Condops, though not much understood, are not that uncommon in NYC.

As a broker, I agree with #4. Your attorney should be familiar with this - many people say 'condop' to refer to coops with condo rules, but that is not the legal definition.

It is quite common to have condops - coop for residence and condo for retail. Tax law stipulates that the coop must receive no less than 80% of it's revenue from maintenace from the residences. If the coop owned the retail space, and it derived more than 20% of it's income from the retail, it would lose it's tax status. When many buildings converted in the 70s and 80s many sponsors (owner of the rental building) wanted to keep the commercial space for themselves - so the retail space was set up as a separate condo.

Ignore the landlease response- that is completely separate from the condop issue. Landlease is when the building does not own the land upon which the building stands - for example - Battery Park City is all Landlease.

The land lease issue may be separate but it is not unimportant since it leads to higher monthlies & the real possibility of much higher monthlies when the lease must be renegotiated.

there's a very high number of condops with land leases compared to other co-ops.

Thanks so much, everybody, this is OP here.

I like my atty so I'm sticking with her, but yeah, it's clear this is common in mixed use buildings. I've bought and sold before so I'm looking over her shoulder and assuming we pass the board meeting coming up, we're in ! :)