Converting SRO to 1 family: what is certificate of non-harassment?
What is a certificate of non-harassment? Someone said it requires a public notice in the newspaper for x amount of months to see if people formerly had complaints about the bldg when it was technically an SRO. Any experience with this? Thanks.
What is a certificate of non-harassment? Someone said it requires a public notice in the newspaper for x amount of months to see if people formerly had complaints about the bldg when it was technically an SRO. Any experience with this? Thanks.
This is very helpful–thank you. When you went to contract awaiting the certificate, was much of your money tied up for a full year? i.e. What are the financial risks involved when doing this? Or is it more the time factor, that you have to wait for all of it to go through. The time doesn’t bother me. The money being tied up might…
Did you have trouble getting the seller to do the paperwork and hire a lawyer to help? Are they required to? We are working with a real estate broker and have not had direct contact with the seller (probably because we haven’t made an offer yet).
A certificate of non-harassment is issued by the buildings department and is a complicated process. First you have to file, with documentation, then you have to publish notice to see if any comes forward. After that it still takes a few months. We went to contract on a house awaiting the certificate. All in all it took a full year to get it done. Make sure your seller does the paperwork and hires a lawyer to help. You don’t get a mortgage for an SRO, even with a certificate of non-harassment. What you can get is a construction loan, because you are basically buying a commercially- zoned building and then converting it to another use. We used Wells Fargo for our construction loan. Good luck.
We didn’t buy it yet. Just doing the research. Interesting to hear your experiences so far.
Did you already buy this thing? I can’t find a bank right now that will finance an SRO purchase even with great credit and cash down.
To answer your question. I was under the impression the CONH was obtained so former residents couldn’t come back and say they had been thrown out of rent stabilized/controlled apartments and now wanted back in.