Closing Costs -- New Development

yes, all checks to the developer needs to be certified/official bank checks. the check to the developer's attorney will also need to be certified. your attorney should give you a list of certified checks to obtain at least a day before closing.

Just out of curiosity, how much are we talking here? I'm thinking of looking at new developments but knew about having to pay the transfer taxes- what other fees are we talking about? There shouldn't be any title search issues with new developments.

You have mortgage recording tax and the bank will require a tittle search , there are many new devolpments that could have possible mechanic liens etc, figure about 5% of the purchase if under 1M add anothe 1% if over.

I'm so sorry alvleo, but I'm not sure why you think new developments wouldn't have any property title issues. Always pay. Particularly pre-construction.

I'm very new to this and hadn't thought about property title issues. It makes sense. I'm looking for a 1-bedroom condo and am trying to figure out if it's worth looking at new development at all if the closing costs are substantially higher than a pre-existing condo.

Wait a bit. I think you'll start to see resales of new units pick up. Keep looking at the completed and soon-to-be completed buildings and find a broker willing to follow the buildings you're interested in. They can do automatic searches by address and can tell you when resales show up.

on a 500k unit your looking at approx. 23k in closing costs on a new unit

Corcoran has a good and fairly accurate breakdown of the closing costs you can expect:

http://corcoran.com/guides/index.aspx?page=ClosingCosts

a friend of ours negotiated on a new development that they will not pay the transfer tax..anyone has had such luck ?

I think people were more sucessful with this a year or so ago. I pushed pretty hard at a number of places and didn't get anywhere with getting transfer taxes paid. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen anymore - it just means (I think) the number of places offering it and the units they are offering it on (if at all) is greatly reduced. 18-24 months ago, I think this was pretty common in the FD; I don't think it is very common anymore. I would be interested, however, if others have had different experiences.

the people that i know that have been able to do this has been mainley in the new development in the lincon center area