If you own a co-op, you own shares in a corporation and a proprietary lease that lets you live in your unit. If you own a condo, you own the unit itself, a deed to real property recorded like any house. That single legal difference is the reason a co-op sale and a condo sale in New York City follow different rules, different taxes, and different timelines, from the day you sign a listing agreement to the day you hand over keys.
Co-ops still outnumber condos across the city: as of the 2023 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, New York City had about 450,000 occupied cooperative apartments versus about 318,000 occupied condominium units, together making up 22% of the city's occupied housing stock.3 Whichever one you own, most of what changes at sale time comes down to who has to approve the buyer, who collects which tax, and how the closing is secured.
This guide walks through the ownership structure itself, how co-op board approval differs from a condo's right of first refusal, the flip tax, the NYC and New York State transfer taxes (plus the buyer-paid mansion tax), financing rules, lien searches versus title insurance, seller closing costs, closing timelines, and how sublet policy can move your price.
Shares and a Proprietary Lease vs. a Deed
A co-op is legally a corporation that owns the building. When you buy a co-op apartment, you're buying shares of that corporation, with the number of shares tied to your unit's size and location, plus a proprietary lease that gives you the exclusive right to occupy your specific unit. You don't hold a deed, and your unit isn't a separate piece of real property in the eyes of the law.
A condo works the way most people picture "owning real estate": you receive a deed to your specific unit, along with an undivided interest in the building's common elements (the lobby, roof, hallways, and mechanical systems), and that deed gets recorded against the property the same way a house sale would be.
That difference in what's actually being sold, a stock certificate and a lease versus a deed, is the root of nearly every other difference covered below: how the building can vet your buyer, which taxes apply and how they're calculated, how the sale is title-checked, and how long the deal takes to close.
How Common Co-ops and Condos Are in NYC
Co-ops remain the more common of the two structures citywide. The 2023 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, cited in a NYC Comptroller's Office analysis of the city's homeowner housing market, counted about 450,000 occupied cooperative apartments against about 318,000 occupied condominium units, meaning co-ops outnumber condos by a wide margin even though condo construction has added meaningfully to the total in recent decades.3 Combined, co-op and condo units make up 22% of the city's occupied housing stock.3
What that means at sale time is practical, not just historical: because co-ops are so much more common, more of the city's buyers, appraisers, and lenders are used to co-op rules, but it also means your buyer pool for a co-op is limited to people willing to go through board approval, while a condo listing can draw from buyers who specifically want to avoid that process.
Co-op Board Approval vs. Condo Right of First Refusal
Selling a co-op means selling to a buyer your board is willing to accept, not just one who's willing to pay your price. The buyer assembles a board package, typically financial statements, tax returns, bank and reference letters, and a signed offer sheet or application, and the board won't schedule an interview until that package is complete. Under the timeline described in one 2026 closing-process breakdown, buyers typically get about 30 business days to secure a mortgage commitment, then about 10 business days to submit a complete board package once that commitment is in hand; under Local Law 58 of 2026, the board then has up to 15 days to confirm the application is complete and flag anything missing, plus up to 45 more days to reach a decision.7
Once the interview happens, the board can reject the application for almost any reason, or no stated reason at all, as long as the rejection doesn't discriminate against a legally protected class. New York courts give co-op boards wide discretion under a legal standard commonly called the business judgment rule, and boards generally aren't required to explain a denial.
A condo board works differently. Instead of approving or rejecting a buyer outright, most condo boards hold only a right of first refusal: the option to buy the unit themselves, on the same terms the outside buyer agreed to, rather than the right to block the sale to someone they simply don't like. If the board doesn't act within 30 days of receiving a complete purchase application, its right of first refusal is automatically deemed waived under most condo bylaws.8
Practically, that means a condo sale is far less likely to be derailed by the board's personal judgment about your buyer late in the process, while a co-op sale can still fall apart over financials, references, or interview impressions after months of work. Either way, review your listing agreement clauses before you sign, so you understand how a board rejection or a slow waiver affects your exclusivity period and any extension terms.
The type of ownership you're selling, shares or a deed, decides your taxes, your timeline, and your buyer pool long before you land on a price.
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The Co-op Flip Tax
A flip tax isn't a government tax at all; it's a resale fee set by an individual building's proprietary lease or house rules, and it's overwhelmingly a co-op phenomenon. Typical NYC co-op flip taxes run about 1% to 3% of the sale price, and the fee is customarily paid by the seller, though your building's governing documents control who actually owes it.4
Flip taxes aren't always calculated the same way from building to building: some charge a flat percentage of the gross sale price, others a percentage of the seller's profit, a flat dollar amount, or a per-share charge. Before you set an asking price, pull your proprietary lease or ask your managing agent exactly how your building calculates it, because a profit-based flip tax and a gross-price flip tax can produce very different numbers on the same sale.
Condos rarely charge a flip tax on resale. Where a condo collects a comparable fee, it's more often a one-time capital contribution charged to the buyer when they first purchase into the building, not a recurring fee on every seller down the line.4
NYC and New York State Transfer Taxes, Including the Mansion Tax
On top of any flip tax, every NYC sale, co-op or condo, owes the city's Real Property Transfer Tax (RPTT), and the NYC Department of Finance is explicit that RPTT applies to transfers of cooperative housing stock shares in addition to deeded real property.1 For 2026, the residential RPTT rate is 1% of the price for sales under $500,000, rising to 1.425% for sales of $500,000 or more.1
New York State layers its own transfer tax on top of the city's. The state rate is $2 for every $500 of consideration, or 0.4%, administered by the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance and reported on Form TP-584; the state's transfer-tax rules define "residential real property" to specifically include a cooperative apartment unit, so co-op share sales owe it exactly like condo deed sales.2
Sellers customarily pay both the NYC RPTT and the NYS transfer tax. Combined, on a sale of $500,000 or more, one seller-cost breakdown put the two together at roughly 1.825% of the price, split between the 1.425% city rate and the 0.4% state rate.10 For the fuller line-by-line picture of every cost a seller owes, not just these two taxes, see how much it costs to sell a home in NYC in 2026.
Layered on top of both transfer taxes is the state's so-called mansion tax, but it's the buyer's obligation, not yours as the seller.2 It applies to residential conveyances, again including co-op share sales, of $1 million or more, starting at 1% of the price.2 Inside New York City, the state adds a supplemental tax on the highest-priced sales: for the NYC portion, NYS DTF describes the additional supplemental rate on sales of $2 million or more as running on an incremental scale of roughly 0.25% to 2.9% depending on price, on top of the base 1%.2 Because the buyer pays it, the mansion tax doesn't reduce your net proceeds directly, but it does affect what a buyer can offer near round-number price thresholds, so it's worth factoring into how you price near $1 million, $2 million, or higher.
Buyer Financing: Down Payment and Debt-to-Income Rules
A condo buyer's financing is a straightforward transaction between them and their lender, secured directly by the deed. A co-op buyer has to clear two sets of requirements: the lender's, and the building's own, which are frequently stricter than what a bank alone would require.6
The most common minimum down payment for an NYC co-op is 20%, though many buildings require 25%, and top-tier buildings can require 50% or an all-cash purchase.6 Co-op boards typically also want to see a debt-to-income ratio of 25% to 30%, and post-closing liquidity, cash and other liquid assets left over after the down payment and closing costs, of roughly one to two years of ongoing housing costs, sometimes more at stricter buildings.6
For you as the seller, this matters because it narrows your buyer pool before the board ever meets: a signed contract from a buyer who can't clear the building's financial minimums won't survive board review, no matter how strong the offer looked on paper. A condo doesn't add that extra financial screen, so a broader range of financed buyers can qualify to close.
UCC Lien Search vs. Title Insurance
Because a condo sale conveys real property, the buyer's title company runs a search of public land records and issues title insurance, protecting the buyer and their lender against liens, judgments, or other claims against the deed that didn't turn up in the search.5
A co-op sale doesn't involve a deed, so there's no title insurance in the same sense. Instead, closing relies on a co-op lien search, essentially a UCC and court-records search to confirm no liens, judgments, or unpaid debts attach to the shares or to you as the seller, backed up by a review of the stock certificate and proprietary lease themselves.5 If your buyer is financing, their lender also files a UCC-1 financing statement against the shares in place of recording a mortgage against a deed, and when it's your own co-op loan being paid off at closing, terminating your bank's lien requires its own UCC-3 filing and fee.510
Skipping title insurance is one reason co-op closings can run cheaper than condo closings on that single line item, though co-op buyers who want protection closer to what a condo buyer automatically gets can typically purchase an optional leasehold-style policy for extra coverage.5
Seller Closing Costs and How Long Each Takes to Close
For you as the seller, the single biggest cost gap between the two structures is the flip tax: a co-op sale adds roughly 1% to 3% of the price on top of everything a condo seller pays, while attorney fees run about the same either way, typically $2,500 to $5,000 for a seller's attorney regardless of property type.10
One recent comparison put that gap in concrete terms: on a $1.5 million sale, total seller closing costs (commission, transfer taxes, attorney fees, and building fees) came to roughly 8.16% of the price for a condo versus about 10.19% for a co-op, a difference of roughly $30,000 that was driven almost entirely by the flip tax.10
Timelines diverge just as much as costs. A condo sale commonly closes in 30-45 days in an all-cash deal, or 45-60 days when the buyer is financing, because the pace is set by the mortgage commitment and title search rather than any board.7 A co-op sale commonly runs 60-90 days or more, since the board package, review, and interview stages stack on top of the same financing and legal steps a condo goes through.7
Timeline drives a lot of what happens between signing and closing regardless of property type; see our full breakdown of how long it takes to sell a house in NYC for the pieces that apply whether you're selling a co-op, a condo, or a house. And if you want a rough sense of your net proceeds before you commit to a timeline, a free home valuation is a reasonable starting point.
Sublet Rules and Their Effect on Price
Sublet policy is one more place the two structures diverge, and unlike some of the differences above, it can show up directly in your sale price. Most co-op boards cap subletting: a common pattern is an initial one-to-three-year owner-occupancy requirement before a shareholder can sublet at all, followed by a limited sublet window (often one to two years), board approval required for every individual sublet, and a minimum lease term, commonly one year, meant to block short-term and Airbnb-style rentals.9
That matters for pricing because lenders track a building's owner-occupancy rate as part of underwriting: some banks won't finance a purchase at all if more than half of a building's units aren't owner-occupied.9 A building that drifts toward more rentals over time can become harder for buyers to finance, which shrinks the pool down to cash buyers and can pull down what units in that building are able to sell for.
Condos typically place far fewer restrictions on renting out a unit, which is part of why condos are generally viewed as more investor-friendly than co-ops and, in many buildings, command a price premium over co-ops for comparable space.9
Frequently Asked Questions
Do co-op and condo sellers pay the same taxes?
Mostly. Both pay the NYC Real Property Transfer Tax and the New York State transfer tax at the same rates, whether the sale is co-op shares or a condo deed.12 Only co-op sellers typically also owe a flip tax, usually 1% to 3% of the price, set by the building rather than the government.4
Who pays the mansion tax, the buyer or the seller?
The buyer. It's a New York State tax that starts at 1% on residential sales of $1 million or more, including co-op share sales, with an additional supplemental rate inside NYC on sales of $2 million or more.2
Can a co-op board reject my buyer for any reason?
Generally yes. Under New York's business judgment rule, a co-op board doesn't have to give a reason for rejecting an applicant, as long as the rejection isn't based on a legally protected characteristic. A condo board, by contrast, usually holds only a right of first refusal, and that right is deemed waived if the board doesn't act within 30 days of a complete application.8
How much longer does a co-op sale take to close than a condo?
Plan on roughly 30-45 days for an all-cash condo, 45-60 days for a financed condo, and 60-90 days or more for a co-op, mostly because of the board package, review, and interview process.7
Do I need title insurance to sell a co-op?
No. Co-op sales use a UCC lien search and a review of the stock certificate and proprietary lease instead of title insurance, since you're transferring shares, not a deed, which keeps that line item cheaper than a condo's title-insurance process.5
Will my buyer need a bigger down payment for a co-op than for a condo?
Often yes. Most co-op boards want at least 20% down, and many want 25% or more, plus a debt-to-income ratio around 25% to 30% and a year or two of post-closing liquidity, requirements a condo lender doesn't impose based on the building.6
Does my building's sublet policy affect what I can sell for?
Yes. Buildings with tighter sublet rules and higher owner-occupancy tend to stay easier for buyers to finance, which can support pricing; buildings that drift toward majority-rental status can struggle to get buyers approved for mortgages, which narrows your buyer pool to cash purchasers.9
