Co-op Boards Often Restrict Overnight Guests in a Pied-a-Terre

A buyer has her eye on a one-bedroom apartment in a Manhattan co-op. She plans to use the apartment to visit her son in Brooklyn and for vacations. She would also like to let relatives and very close friends stay there occasionally when she's not in town. How can she find out if this is allowed without leading the co-op board to believe, erroneously, that she would turn the apartment into a short-term rental? Brokers advise her it's better not to ask the board if visitors can stay in an apartment when the shareholder is absent. How can this buyer get answers without tanking her application?

The buyer should make sure that her desire to use the apartment as an occasional home is permitted in the co-op’s proprietary lease and house rules, replies the Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times. The buyer can ask her broker to get the governing documents from the seller’s broker. Once you've established that using the apartment as a pied-a-terre is allowed, look to see what the rules are about guests. Who is allowed to stay? And can they be there when you are not?

“If you see pieds-à-terre are allowed and there aren’t any restrictions, don’t ask the board if there are restrictions,” advises Lisa Chajet, a broker at Coldwell Banker Warburg who specializes in co-ops. “It’s nothing a buyer brings up to a board under any circumstances.”

But finding a co-op that places no restrictions on pieds-a-terre might not be easy, says Andrew Freedland, who practices condominium and cooperative law at Herrick Feinstein. “I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of them would not be OK with various relatives coming in and out of an apartment when the lessee is not there,” he says. “I would be very cautious about this sort of setup.”

In many buildings, rules against overnight guests were put in place long before the city passed Local Law 18 in 2023, part of a campaign to thwart illegal short-term rentals that threatened to turn some co-ops and condos into virtual hotels. This means that even if there is no short-term written agreement with your guests, and even if no money is changing hands, lending your apartment to them would still be against the building’s rules.

This buyer might want to consider buying in a condo rather than a co-op. A condo's rules, according to Freedland, might be more flexible when it comes to overnight guests. And the buyer won't have to endure an interview with a co-op board.