You'll probably need some kind of insurance Jess, for hazard-y stuff.

Well, we already have regular apartment insurance (which covers our personal property, and the inside of the apartment) in addition to the building's overall policy.

What's the difference between a co-op and a condo?

With a condo, you're buying airspace -- you legally own the inside walls of the apartment and everything within it. With a co-op, you're buying shares in a corporation that owns a building, and those shares just happen to be exactly enough to lease yourself an apartment in said building. In practice, you end up "owning" an apartment either way, but from the bank's perspective, if you buy into a co-op, you're not buying property, and so you don't get a mortgage. Instead, you get a loan that acts in every practical way exactly like a mortgage, but the bank doesn't call it one, and legally you're not considered a homeowner (even though you still get all the same tax benefits).

Huh. I always figured they were the same and that one term was just older. Co-ops came first, right?

I think it's more that condos are more common in some places and co-ops in New York others.

There's may be other financial reasons, but my understanding is that co-ops are set up to basically let the people who live in a building control who lives there, hence the interview that Jess had to have.

Usually it's around 20% downpayment that cuts out the PMI (though there are programs that you can use that can cut it out without the large downpayment, usually for lower-income first-time homebuyers). It can add just a little or a lot to a house payment, and can sometimes be a barrier to people who have neither enough for a %20 downpayment or the extra hundered a month for the mortgage payment. OTOH, at least it's a way to get a house without the huge downpayment.

I know nothing of co-ops as we don't have many (any?) of those here.

Jessica, thanks for explaining that. I've always been curious, but forget to look it up when I'm near a computer.

Here there is a big fuss over ground rent. You own the structure, but pay rent on the lot. It's usually not much but people can lose their homes over past-due rents that are much, much less than the value of the home (like a few thousand.) And the system is antiquated, so records are really sketchy. It's all fascinating.

I love the assistants on Ugly Betty.

Why am I so cruel to commas? I don't know.

Here there is a big fuss over ground rent. You own the structure, but pay rent on the lot.

Fascinating. Around here, that's something you'd only see with temporary structures (e.g. trailer parks) -- but in that case, there's a development with a clear owner, not scattered individual lots or sketchy old records. In those cases, who generally owns the lot?

(Yes, I'm a dork about all these regional oddities.)

I think it's more that condos are more common in some places and co-ops in New York others.

Heh -- yep, NYC is co-op-land all right. (The book we have on "how to buy condos, co-ops, and townhouses" is all full of paragraphs on why you should avoid co-ops, mostly due to the fact that your bank will have no idea how to deal with one if you don't live on the East Coast. But most older owner-occupied buildings in NYC are co-ops -- if you move into a condo, it's probably a newer building.)

Co-ops came first, right?

I don't know, but given that co-ops outnumber condos in NYC (where most of the country's oldest apartment buildings are), it wouldn't surprise me.