How to Sublet a Coop Apt

1- streeteasy is a great place to post listings
2- craigslist is secondary
3- newspapers
4- sublet.com

you price the rental based on comparible listings - a great place to look is streeteasy, the new york times, and big brokerages such as citi or corcoran.

i dont think that you should reduce the price based on a tenant having to beinconveineced by a board. look for similar units being subleted in a coop

herman a - http://www.promediacorp.com/herman/pindex.html

Hermanita, I'm not really sure that this StreeteasyTalk IS meant to list sales & rentals. I certainly wouldn't want to start seeing a lot of that!

I used a broker to sublet my apartment and had no problem finding a good tenant quickly (it helped that my apartment is near NYU). I did NOT reduce the rental price, which I based on comparables in the building and surrounding area. I would try a broker first--remember the fee is paid by the renter, not you.

The problem with Craigslist and other do-it-yourself outlets is that you will have to weed through the potential renters yourself, many of whom may not pass muster with your board. Let a broker do the dirty work for you.

JT, renters usually (mostly) want to move in within 1 month at the most. With NYC coops, the weeding process by the board and the management will take about 2 months. I tried the broker way before and it turned into a complete disaster. I wasted my time with the broker and then did it myself (yes, NYT and Craigslist) in 1 week. Plus, most coops have time restrictions on the sublease. It's not a broker's forte. By the way, the lone prospect my broker procured was a character I wouldn't want in my apartment.

Doesn’t matter how you do it (yourself or with a broker), you need as much info possible to base your decision on

1.read your by-laws it will tell you some info about rules and length of sublease
2.contact one of your board members to ask how often do they meet and how long does it take them to look through board package, what is their criteria for tenant
3.Contact your management company (ask them to e-mail you board package. It usually have all needed forms required by your building and some info how to handle board package)

Good luck

elena
(broker)

Regarding pricing:
You should price it competitively. See what similar apartments in the area go for. How many are available. Take to consideration fees that required by the board (they may be substantial), so depending on the market: your potential tenant may pay them, you may share them with your tenant, or you may pick up them entirely in order to make your apartment competitive with others available for rent

elena
(broker)

I would argue that the best way to find a tenant is to get the apartment listed in the Manhattan real estate databases, which means hiring a broker who is a member of the Real Estate Board of New York.

As pointed out by others, the tenant pays the broker's fees, so using a broker doesn't have a financial cost to you.

However, there is a loss of control by outsourcing the job, so if you really want to do it yourself, I would suggest spending some money and advertising on nytimes.com. Being able to put a floorplan up is really helpful here, so dig your floorplan out of your files and make a computer scan of it. Kinko's can do this for you if you can't.

As barskaya noted above the time lag is usually paperwork -- especially in the summer -- so whichever way you go you want to find a friendly board member and let them know that you want to sublet and that they will be seeing a board package in a couple of months. You'll also want to find out if there are restrictions on showing -- some co-ops don't allow open houses on the weekends. Then you should get the application package from the management company.

When you advertise the apartment, if you include the words "co-op sublet" those are a clue to potential tenants and their brokers that there will be application fees and move-in deposits. At the point when anyone seems truly interested, you can then sit down and say, "well, there's a $300 application fee, which is non-refundable, and the building requires a $750 move-in deposit, which you get back, blah, blah blah." Often, who should pay what fees will be in the application package itself.

For initial pricing, if you use a broker you treat it exactly like a sale and have them show you comps, so they don't underprice it to make it move quickly. If you are DIY, pick a price out of the air, and then go on nytimes.com or streeteasy and see what other apartments you can get for that price. Are they better? Have they been sitting?

As far as finding good tenants, you are not allowed to use discriminatory language like "couples only" or "no children," but I have found the words "credit check fee $25" (which are not discriminatory if they apply to every applicant) do a lot to weed out the casual shoppers.

Good luck!

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Or...not sure what the protocal is for this...but email me at kunstsar@gmail.com with more details about it. I'm currently looking for a co op sublet to start on or around Sept and while I've found lots of great stuff I don't want to pay a broker fee for just a year and if you're subletting now you might want to sell in 09 if the market picks back up so it's not advantageous to lock yourself into a 2 year sublet. Just a thought, shoot me an email and let me know!

Sarah