Last August, a state law went into effect allowing the city to make co-op sale prices available to the public. I wrote a blog about the new transparency Coops sale prices public record. I've also wriiten several times about ACRIS the city's Automated City Record Information System.
While it is great that the information is public it is difficult to use and understand by most non real estate professionals. First you need to know the block and lot number for records you are looking to locate once you find the record it only has a sale price and does not give any information as to the size of the apartment or the room count for coops. It does give square footage for condos but condo sales have always been public.
A page on the Web site of the city's Department of Finance - under the "Recent Sales Information" category at www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/property/property.shtml - that went online today allows anyone with a computer to browse property sale prices by neighborhood and address. The sales data goes back four years.
While this information is now broken down by borough and neighborhood in adobe and excel formats and is a major improvement it still doesn't give an apartments size or room count for coops.
After showing a coop apartment yesterday a buyer asked me how he can find out the prices of recent sales in the building. I told him he could go on the city website but it won't give more than a number and he will have to know the block and lot number and it is complicated to use. I told him I will do it because I not only have the city records I have the listing records and apartment history.
So while transparency is a step in the right direction the numbers can often be deceiving to the public. Whith out the size of the apartments and other relevant info such as renovations the information can actually give a consumer a false value of their apartment.
This is how the information appears on the web page. Adobe or Excel. The records go back to 2003
Mitchell Hall, Associate Broker, New York, NY
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THIS IS SO typical of the problem with transparency.
More and more information in the hands of the consumer who hasn't the foggiest idea what it means and/or what to do with it except FEEL that they are empowered.