Will Kwan, a co-op board member who testified Tuesday against a bill requiring boards to tell rejected buyers why they were denied, said he can “count on one hand the number of applications we have rejected” during his 28 years on the board.
So, if the bill passes, only about once every seven years would his board have to explain a rejection to a would-be buyer. Not a compelling argument against it, Mr. Kwan!
But I don’t want to pick on a long-serving, unpaid board member. I am one myself. Fortunately, City Council member Eric Dinowitz voiced an even more illogical argument for me to highlight.
“Wouldn’t it be more prudent to just get more data, get better data before we invariably increase the risk for individual board members and increase the costs for shareholders?” he said, according to Sheridan Wall’s article.
Did you pick up on Dinowitz’s hypocrisy? It’s subtle at first but becomes clearer if you read his quote two or three times.
Dinowitz demands data while saying something wholly unsupported by data. To quote Dinowitz, before making claims, wouldn’t it be prudent for him to just get more and better data showing the bill would “invariably” increase the risk and costs for shareholders?
All he has to do is look at what happened in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties after they passed similar legislation. Spoiler alert: Nothing. There was no increase in lawsuits filed by rejected buyers.
“There is nothing about writing a letter that increases your costs,” Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, told me. “And the idea that there’s an army of lawyers out there waiting to feast off non-compliant disclosures is patently absurd.”
As readers of The Real Deal know, I often criticize Council bills that would create compliance headaches but little or no benefit. And I have not hesitated to call out Council member Pierina Sanchez or Public Advocate Jumaane Williams when I think they’re wrong.
But, like most real estate agents, I believe they’re right that people applying to buy into a co-op deserve a timely answer from the board and to know why they are rejected. Fears of litigation have not been borne out where such laws were implemented.
It’s quite possible that bidders who are kept in limbo or rejected without explanation are more likely to sue. Give them answers and they tend to move on with their house hunting.
What we’re thinking about: Christine Quinn’s nonprofit WIN (formerly Women In Need) came up with a Chutes and Ladders-style board game to cleverly demonstrate the pitfalls families face while navigating the city’s long, complicated process to get affordable housing. Should the Real Estate Board of New York come up with a landlord’s version for any particular program? Send thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: With Steve Buscemi’s sale of his Park Slope townhouse, there might be no movie stars left in Park Slope other than John Turturro. The neighborhood previously lost Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. Kelly McGillis (Tom Cruise’s love interest in the original “Top Gun”) is long gone from the brownstone on Garfield Place she had in the 1980s.
Elsewhere…
In a recent “what we’re thinking about” item, I asked if real estate firms are susceptible to the same kind of corruption that led to the conviction of 70 NYCHA employees for taking kickbacks from contractors they hired.
One industry veteran replied: “There is NO question that landlords, property managers, and — I would toss in — contractors and architectural firms are vulnerable to their employees’ dishonesty.”
It seems to me that whenever one person is spending another person’s money, kickbacks will be a temptation.
Closing time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Thursday was $7.8 million for a 7,414-square-foot condominium unit at 87 Leonard Street in Tribeca. Emily Beare, Lexi Alper and Beth Doud Tomashoff with CORE had the listing.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $5.5 million for a former Family Dollar store at 224-11 Linden Boulevard in Cambria Heights.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $16.75 million for a co-op unit at The Dakota, 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side. Daniela Kunen with Douglas Elliman has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 15,230-square-foot, 18-unit project at 715 East 224th Street in Wakefield. Mohammad Badaly filed the permit.
— Matthew Elo