Certificate of Occupancy. Calling NWT??

That 1087839 BIN is from one of the predecessor buildings on 15CPW's lots. 15 CPW got its own BIN, so CofO would be the one without a T at http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/PropertyProfileOverviewServlet?requestid=11&bin=1087510. I found it by doing Browse Block from 1087839's page.

An old building (before the 1920s) may not have a CofO at all.

The TCO should have the floors that can be occupied until the final CofO is issued. E.g., it might say floors x-y, and might narrow it down even more by excluding whichever apartment has the external contstruction elevator, e.g.. The contracts with the buyers and lenders will say that a permanent CofO has to be issued, so no big deal buying before then. Unless the developer goes bust or something, and leaves things hanging.

Thanks a lot NWT. As usual, full of knowledge and willing to help. Would you know why it took till 2012 to get a permanent certificate of occupancy?

Don't know. The building permit will have a long list of things that have to be inspected and signed off upon, so maybe there was some system that wasn't finished yet.

Also, every apartment has to be habitable. When an apartment is sold as raw space, the developer will usually install a bare-bones kitchen and bath, just to get the CofO. Maybe that didn't happen, and the CofO had to wait for a buyer to finish off her apartment.

in my (non-legal-advice) experience, sometimes TCOs run for awhile because no one really cares about a permanent C of O. Then something changes, and everybody freaks out.

one case I remember was on William Street, where there were just little elevator things that the developer needed to finish off, and never really did, so he kept rolling the TCO over and over. that worked for years, and then DoB became less amenable to that and the TCO expired, and I had to spend months working with the building's law firm to get something in place so that we could sell our unit to a buyer who needed financing. (I was seller's broker).

One of the holdups was getting the right inspector out from the city to get the signoffs. That took bleeping forever.

But unless the banks care, often the clients, if they have cash, don't care (again, I'm not an attorney, and don't take this as legal advice, because I don't think that this is what an attorney would say).

And that's not a hard-and-fast rule; I remember going with buyers to one property in SoHo that was sitting for awhile because, even though the unit was very nice, the building, which had only a few units, was overbuilt, and no one wanted to assume the risk of taking it back through DoB (or at least not at the price that the seller was offering their unit at).

I'm sure 30yrs has more war stories.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Thanks you both.

I really wish front_porch would stop giving medical advice. Where's the AMA when you need them to stop this behavior?