Side-by-side comparison of condos, co-ops, and HOAs — ownership, governance, board approval power, financing, tax treatment, billing, and what each one demands from property-management software.
Yes — but only if building type is modeled as a first-class field that drives terminology, billing logic, approval workflows, and document retention. Generic platforms tend to feel like they were built for one building type and stretched to cover the others, which surfaces as missing §216 letters for co-ops, missing ARC workflows for HOAs, or a single 'common charges' field forced onto all three regardless of the legal substrate.
Co-ops, by a wide margin. The Board of Directors gates every sale, every sublet, every alteration, and every prospective shareholder through a documented board-package workflow — and that pipeline runs continuously. Add the §216 letter every January, the underlying-mortgage refinance every five to seven years, the flip-tax administration on every closing, and the annual shareholder meeting and director election. Condos and HOAs both run heavier on capital and compliance; co-ops run heavier on governance throughput.
In a condo, the board has a right of first refusal — it can match an offer and have the condominium buy the unit, but it cannot reject the buyer. ROFR is exercised rarely because the building would have to fund the purchase. In a co-op, the Board of Directors approves or rejects every prospective shareholder, with broad discretion subject only to anti-discrimination law; rejection is final and largely unreviewable. In an HOA, the board generally cannot block a home sale at all. The downstream effect is that co-ops run a high-touch, continuous approval pipeline while condos and HOAs do not.
Mostly no, in the form most people imagine. New York City is dominated by condos and co-ops; what residents loosely call 'the HOA' in a city building is almost always a Board of Managers (condo) or Board of Directors (co-op). True HOAs in the New York metro are concentrated in planned communities in Westchester, Long Island, parts of Staten Island, and across New Jersey and Connecticut. If a Manhattan resident says 'our HOA,' assume condo or co-op until proven otherwise.
Condo owners pay common charges (operations and reserves only) and pay real estate taxes directly to the city. Co-op shareholders pay maintenance, a single line item bundling operations, reserves, building-level RE taxes, and underlying-mortgage debt service — with the §216-deductible portion broken out annually. HOA owners pay dues covering common-area operations and reserves, and pay RE taxes directly to the municipality. The billing engine has to know which model applies per property, or it will misreport for two of the three.
Condos are governed by NY Real Property Law Article 9-B plus the recorded declaration and bylaws. Co-ops are corporations under NY Business Corporation Law, governed by their certificate of incorporation, bylaws, and proprietary lease — with shareholder tax pass-through under IRC §216. HOAs are governed primarily by the declaration of covenants, conditions & restrictions (CC&Rs) and the bylaws, with general non-profit corporation law in the background; New York does not have a comprehensive HOA statute analogous to the Condominium Act.