Land Lease Buildings...Buy or Avoid?

Buildings are considered "Land Lease" when the coop or condominium do not own the land that the building is sitting on. This adds an additional expense (rent on the land) to the building causing maintenance to be significantly higher than similar buildings that are not Land Lease.

In addition, if there is less than 30 years left on the lease (most start with a 99 year length) banks will not write loans for apartments in the building.

So, why then would anyone buy an apartment in a Land Lease building? VALUE!!!!

In order to sell these apartments the sellers must incentivize buyers to buy and the way to do that is to lower the price....the more drastic the cut in price the more likely the seller is to sell.

At a certain price the high maintenance stops being an issue and the apartment sells...its always about the price.