800 West End Avenue....

Just curious Ali, how does a coop verify if one is not using an apt. as a permanent residence, representations made at closing aside? If they thought you were not living their full-time, can they require you to produce tax returns as evidence post-closing?

It's more on the way in. If they see you own a 5 bedroom house somewhere, claim 3 dependents on your taxes, make 7 figures, pay taxes in another state, and you're buying a studio apartment, it's going to be hard to explain how you're not buying as a pied-a-terre.

Re: Verification of living in coop
Your managing agent gets your real estate tax bill. You must guarantee to the city that your apartment is your PRIMARY residence. If you cannot prove you live in the place full time, the city charges you a
'non-resident' at a much higher rate. I moved to a coop and filed that I was using the apartment as a primary residence. It took a few years for the city to "process" the paperwork. The only reason the paperwork was finally processed was because the lawyers for the managing agent went to the city agency where this was handled. There were 5 new owners whose paperwork was not processed.

The StreetEasy data problem has been fixed, thank you.

Ximon, your question is really interesting ... to try to answer it I went back and read my own proprietary lease (I live in a co-op) and of course there's absolutely nothing in it (or the house rules) about requiring primary residency at all! So the only place it's really mentioned is in the application.

Typical ways that co-ops check "on the way in," as 30 put it, are to look at residency on your taxes; to look at residency on your driver's license; to see where your work is located, and to see what other properties you own and what their status is.

In practice, the owners of any co-op fall into a range of wealth, and the co-op is going to be concerned if your assets and income are significantly higher than that of most members, just as they're going to be concerned if your assets and income are lower than typical. I did hear of one lower Fifth Avenue (i.e. Gold Coast) building that was primary-residence-only turning down an applicant who had what they thought was "too much money" -- the board member who told me this story explained that he didn't understand why anyone with assets and income so far above his building's baseline would want to live in his building, and that the board assumed that it was a either an attempt at a stealth purchase for another family member, or that the applicant wanted a pied-a-terre and was lying about it.

If I'm representing buyers then obviously I want to combat that possible narrative in a board member's head, so I might present a narrative like "they're keeping their existing Florida condo but converting it into an income property; here's the rental listing" or "yes they own in Florida but need to be in New York for work, and their primary residency is already in New York, here look at their most recent taxes."

That said, many of my neighbors own summer/weekend homes, sometimes in other states, and obviously some people have careers where they have international assignments or take sabbaticals. The intention is just to keep out people who will be here so rarely that they can't respond to a leak in their unit, or who get bored of their Manhattan plaything and stop paying maintenance on it.