Condos vs. Co-ops

[MoeRedskins]

Looking into buying a home now that rates are down. I was looking at this one place, fantastic location, awesome building, would be really fun to live there. In my price range as well. Problem is that it is a Co-op, where as instead of owning property I would own shares in a corporation that owns the building (as opposed to owning my condo in my building). Now, according to the realtor, the property has not had a foreclosure or any sort of bank seizure. That makes me think that these properties not only sell, but also rent well. I could also rent the unit when I do decide to move out. Now the property I'm looking at is about 10K less then the exact same units in the building.

Are coops that bad of an investment or not?

[Sikbug]

Well, when I lived in DC I didn't know crap about co-ops but after moving to Manhattan and getting a co-op I feel good enough to help you with this one. I'm not sure how strict the co-op is but up here they can vary. We have condops as well that have rules like a condo but it's setup like a co-op.

How most co-ops work up here is, they usually request at least 20% down or more to insure that the buyer is financially safe and thus tenants are probably not going to lose their apts and having the rest of the coop pick up the slack (making the CC's go up).

They also usually have a board approval, of your financial background (be prepared to bare all) and a interview. Once again in the attempt to make sure no hooligans move in and can pay for their place.

Here in Manhattan a lot of the coops are still doing ok while the housing market has bottomed out every where else because of these rules.

There are also tax benefits and other things, but again I'm not sure if they will apply down there.

IMO, I'd rather buy in a co-op if I knew I was going to get approved (they even deny clebs in some of the real high end buildings)