The High Road: Condo applications make no sense

Master bedroom of Tribeca condo with adjoining terrace.

One reason that buyers searching for an apartment in New York prefer condos to co-ops is that condos cannot reject applications.

While most co-ops put prospective buyers through hell to merit approval as financially sound and otherwise desirable enough to become shareholders, condo boards just don’t have that option.

All that condo boards of managers can, and hardly ever, do is exercise the right of first refusal.  They’d have to purchase the apartment themselves.

How then to explain the practice of