Condo Offering Plans

You can order specific ones from the web site of the New York State attorney general, but you have to go in person to view them, either in Albany or in their NYC office down by Wall Street. There, you can read them or make copies for a fee. (I went down there once with a digital camera and basically took a picture of each page I wanted, so that I wouldn't have to pay for copying or carry a bunch of paper. Converting to PDF and printing was a chore but it sort of worked out.)

I think one of the title companies (Title Vest?) is also trying to create a collection of condo and coop offering plans, but you'd probably have to retain them for some sort of service in order to get access to their collection, and it's not likely to be complete yet at this point since I think they just started.

you can buy them from the individual condos -- they tend to run around a couple hundred bucks.

If you want to sort of "rent" an offering plan -- some buildings have a deal where you can write them a check, get the plan for 24 hours, read it and return it (assuming you haven't written on it) and then get your check back.

Of course, if you end up getting serious about the property you'll have to buy it anyway, because your lawyer will want to read it, but this lets you "test-drive."

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Is the offering plan the same as the declaration?
If so, you can certainly get the condo declaration off of acris. As long as it's too new. (before the declaration is filed).

A copy of the declaration (or the intended form of declaration, if it hasn't become effective yet) is included as an exhibit to the Offering Plan. It's not the same thing, though a lot of the info from the declaration is repeated in the summaries that are part of the plan.

I do think sponsors should be required to have a free downloadable PDF of the offering plan up on their web sites. It's technically a matter of public record, and people shouldn't have to pay for it when it can be distributed essentially at no cost to the sponsor.

edit
Im sure you all gathered I meant.. "As long as it's NOT too new"

"I do think sponsors should be required to have a free downloadable PDF" One of the many needed things on the list of reforms for NYRE.

You caan make an appointment to inspect plans you're interested in by calling 212-416-8123,
and going to 120 Broadway in the financial distrrict.

I think you want to go here first:

http://www.ag.ny.gov/online_forms/email_information_law.jsp

Some plans they have only up in Albany, not at the FiDi office, so it's better to make the initial request through the web site, and then after they have confirmed they have the plans or obtained the file from Albany, they'll send you a letter to confirm you can call and set up an appointment.

There're some at www.offeringplansonline.com. Mostly Brooklyn.

Post 87, "distributed at no cost to the sponsor" how? I've got the TWT offering plan on my desk, and it's the size of a phone book, more than 300 pages plus a couple hundred pages of amendments.

Who's going to scan that for free, especially since it has to be periodically updated?

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

once the plan is in electronic format - it may be filed that way in the first place, idk - it could be made available with 0 distribution cost. Updates are amendments, the original plan is not altered. I would hate to see the size of that pdf though.

Chances of this happening? less than zero.

Condo decs are up on acris, they range between 30 and 130 pages. As well as the ammendments

The thing was surely initially produced on a computer. It could have been printed to PDF, as could each amendment. You don't necessarily need to scan a hard copy. In fact I've seen brokers running searches on PDFs of an offering plan to get specific information from Schedule A regarding an apartment they were trying to sell me - so in at least some cases the PDFs are already in existence and it's merely a matter of uploading them and providing the link.

Given that all these "beautiful" project web sites are being developed anyway, whatever (tiny) marginal cost involved in creating a PDF of the offering plan and providing it for download would be subsumed into the cost of developing the web site.

Basically the 3-day window and the fairly common practice of only selling an offering plan to people making "serious offers" is a way of maintaining asymmetrical information. Sponsors don't want to make it easy to share information from the offering plan and allow buyers to make a comparison using the most complete information possible, because their sales prices depend to a certain extent on keeping buyers in the dark.

BTW that lawyer running offeringplansonline should get some sort of medal from the people of NYC. More, please.

Crashwait. What offering plan are you looking for? If I have it I'll YouSendIt to you.

truth - I dont see OPs on ACRIS? how do u find them there? I went to 120 Broadway to inspect 7 OPs of new devs to verify some stuff during spot checks and each had 6-8+ amendments. I asked the manager there about e-filing and he all but said - 'no way that happens'. They have some docs there, the rest are in Albany, as someone said above. I had to sit in their office for 2 hours and inspect each one and their sched As. I was told the Sched As are on BIS, but a city rep for that system couldnt help me find them. So instead, we got a list of supposedly 1000s of bldgs that have an electronic version of sched As..again, cant seem to find them

OPs are not on acris, but condo decs are. Also, OP amendments are not on acris.

Yes, Condo Declarations are up on Acris, along with condo declaration ammendments. Can't say the same for offering plans. Obviously the younger the conversion, the better the paperwork is.

Point is, if they scan and file 100 page condo declarations, 200 page offering plans should be as well.

I think the timing is also an issue. By the time the condo declaration gets filed, haven't a lot of buyers already signed contracts? The offering plan could be filed with the AG's office a year or two before that.

I think a public record like that should be freely available for download as soon as it is filed, so that prospective buyers can compare various developments they are considering in real time, and real estate experts can get more complete information about the market. Things like "shadow inventory", for example, would be much easier to track.

I am proud to introduce to you a site recently launched which is a free online repository of offering plans for condominium and cooperative buildings. It is similar to the one launched by Titlevest. It is my hope that real estate professionals will utilize this site as an informational tool. It is located at WWW.OFFERINGPLAET.COM

I am also asking anyone who has a copy of an offering plan or amendments to send me a copy so that I may post it to the site. They can email it to me at info@offeringplanet.com.

- Phil Lavender

My property needs admenments for its offering plan before we can sign the contract, it was supposed to be out around April 2013, and now it's August, but I am still waiting, anyone knows why it takes such a long time? Anything I can do to push it faster?..help