Confirming Legal Status of a Multifamily Home in NYC

[Vito DiIenna]

Hello BP Community - my first post, here it goes.  I own a 2 family home since 2016 that I have rented in Queens, New York.  Time has come to sell.  During Buyer's title search, it was identified that there is no Certificate of Occupancy (CofO) for the home confirming it is a legal 2 family.  Home was constructed in 1930, CofOs were required starting 1938.  IOne option is to obtain a Letter of No Objection as to the home's use as a 2 family from the New York City (NYC) Department of Buildings.  It has been suggested to go the route of an Expediter to facilitate - they charge in the range of $3k to $6k for this.  So my questions to the community:

1-Does anyone have experience with this process of obtaining a Letter of No Objection and could advise whether I could go at this alone or would recommend staying with an Expediter?

2-I am trying to position to the Buyers to take it as-is: home has been used as a 2 family since its construction and I just bought it 2 years ago with this not coming up.  It also appraised ~3% higher than contract price.  Any other pointers or leverage I could use?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[Vito DiIenna]

Hello Vin Se.  So this was a number of years ago and I don't deal much in NYC anymore, so things may have changed.  But the way this unfolded was I did the research and could have obtained a Letter of No Objection.  The timeline on that appeared to be potentially lengthy and costly.  And in my case, it was just the Buyer who was asking for it (not a lender).  So I obtained the original survey of the home when it was built and at different points when it was sold (I was fortunate in that family had owned it before me and I was able to do the research to get to all of those surveys).  What they showed is that the small changes to the property over time did not have anything to do with the second unit the home had and it was always constructed and used as a 2 family. I made the point to the Buyer that this is how it was purposed.  And then I applied some leverage knowing that if they did not want to move forward that I would find another interested Buyer who was clearly ok without having the Certificate and knowing it was always used as a 2 family.  Hope that helps.