As you can imagine, most of the houses here in Queens are very old, and some of them were built prior to 1938 when certificates of occupancy actually began being issued. In addition to that, it is very common to see 2 family homes converted from 1 family, 3 families converted from 2, etc. It’s also very common to come across houses that are being taxed as a 2 family, but legally a 1 family, or being taxed as a 3 family, but legally a 2 family and so on. To make things more complicated, sometimes these conversions are done illegally, or the conversion process was never signed off on so the new Certificate of Occupancy was never issued and as a result, the legal use remains unchanged.
For this reason, it’s really important that you understand what a CO is, when you can expect to find or receive one, when you can expect not to find one, and what you should do when a CO is not available.
So what is a Certificate of Occupancy?
The definition of a CO as per NYC.gov is “A Certificate of Occupancy is the key document used to certify the legal use and occupancy of a building. The Certificate describes how a building may be occupied, for example, a two-family home, a parking lot, a 40-unit multiple dwelling, or a store.”
So, even if a property is being taxed as a 2 family, 3 family, etc, that does not necessarily mean that it is indeed the legal use of that building. Reason why is because the tax classification is determined by the Department of Finance, but the legal use is determined by the Department of Buildings, two totally different things.
When can you expect to find or receive a C of O?
Here in NYC, certificates of occupancy’s began being issued in 1938. So, if you’re looking at a property that was built after 1938, there should be a C of O on file with DOB (Department of Buildings). You can access the C of O using the city’s BIS (Building Information System), or you can access C of O’s by visiting the Department of Buildings in person. Many times the CO will be on the BIS website, but on occasion they are not there so in those cases, you have to do some extra work to find it.
If you look up a property on BIS and don’t find the CO, then your next step would be to either visit Department of Buildings yourself, or you can contact a Title Company and order a CO search from them. This costs some money, but the cost will be minuscule in comparison to the price of the house you’re buying. If you need a recommendation for a title company that can help you with this, let us know and we can send you the info of one of our preferred title companies.
When can you expect NOT to find or receive a C of O?
Buildings built before 1938 aren’t required to have a Certificate of Occupancy – unless later alterations changed its use, egress or occupancy. If someone requires proof of a building’s legal use and it’s exempt from the CO requirement – the owner can contact the Department’s borough office to request a Letter of No Objection. DOB provides Letters of No Objection to confirm the legal use of a building constructed before 1938. To request a Letter of No Objection, owners must go to the DOB Borough Office where their property is located.
So, if you are buying a property in Queens that was built prior to 1938, you may want to request a LNO depending on the property type. For example, we’ve sold many single family homes in Queens that were built prior to 1938, but we have never provided a LNO because it was functioning and being marketed as a single family home. On the other hand, whenever we sell multi family homes (2 family, 3 family, etc), we find that buyers understandably want proof that the legal use of the building matches what is being marketed so this is when we typically have to do a CO search to confirm legal use, or on rare occasions, we may need to get a LNO. Long story short, if you’re buying a multi family, make sure you get some type of proof that the property is actually what the owner/agent is marketing it as.
Moral of the Story
So the key takeaway here is that you should be keenly aware that for NYC properties built after 1938, there should be a CO on file and you should find it yourself or request a copy from the seller side. For properties built prior to 1938, you will want to make sure that you (or your attorney) do some extra due diligence in order to make sure that the legal use of the building is indeed what is being marketed and advertised. The last thing you want to do is buy a 2 family and then learn that it’s a 1 family, or buy a 3 family just to learn that it’s actually a 2 family. Unfortunately we’ve seen this happen many times.
Well, hope this information is helpful. We’re sending out these emails once a month in an attempt to educate all of the home buyers in our network. We do this day in and day out and sometimes we forget that not everyone knows these things 🙂 So, if you have any ideas for topics that you’d like us to cover, please send them over and we’ll make sure to address them.
2 responses to “How to Verify the Certificate of Occupancy of a Property in NYC”
If the co in NYC was obtained in the 1900s, but was improperly filed or had comments but a used group ug used was also improperly filed, for example instead of ug4, ug 6 was used as it was the right use after the work was done. Currently if zoning rules that it is ug 6 and building says it’s is ug4, who is right and who prevails. Can the landlord keep using the building as on the CO, does the owner have to abide by the building departments interpretation or interpretation by zoning Department of NYC
In the above comment how do you reconcile the different interpretations between zoning and DOB without incurring a lot of money and doing an Alt1 modification, for an old building which would cost 10 to $20,000 and would require you to take care of all other violations which may exist on the property