New York HOA Foreclosure

Section 1 — Overview: How HOA foreclosure works in New York

New York forecloses through the courts, and here the path forks sharply: condominiums and cooperatives travel fundamentally different routes, and that split is the single most important fact on this page.¹ A condominium unit owner holds real property, so the board of managers collects unpaid common charges by foreclosing a real-property lien under the New York Condominium Act, Real Property Law (RPL) Article 9-B, § 339-d et seq.² A cooperative "owner" holds something different — shares in a cooperative corporation plus a proprietary lease — and that interest counts as personal property; the cooperative and its lender enforce a security interest in those shares under Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Article 9, not through real-property foreclosure.³ The court structure adds to the confusion for operators who work across states: in New York, the Supreme Court is the trial court of general jurisdiction, the Appellate Division is the intermediate appellate court, and the Court of Appeals sits at the top.⁴ Federal rules layer on top of all of this — the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay.⁵ The sections that follow lay out the statutory framework, the step-by-step sequence for condominiums and cooperatives, recent legislative and judicial activity, and where New York stands nationally.

Section 2 — The statutory framework

2A. The Condominium Act and the common-charge lien

The New York Condominium Act, RPL Article 9-B, governs how condominiums form, operate, and run day to day, and it supplies the defined terms that enforcement relies on — "unit," "common charges," "common expenses," and "board of managers."⁶ Under RPL § 339-z, the board of managers holds a lien on each unit for unpaid common charges plus interest, and that lien comes ahead of all other liens except three: tax liens, all sums unpaid on a first mortgage of record, and sums unpaid on certain subordinate mortgages held by named state and city housing agencies.⁷ Here is the point people most often get wrong. New York does not hand the residential condominium lien a six-month "super-priority," or any limited priority over the first mortgage. The lien sits wholly behind a first mortgage of record, which means a first-mortgage foreclosure that produces no surplus wipes out the common-charge lien entirely.⁸ The Court of Appeals confirmed that subordination in Bankers Trust Co. v Board of Managers of Park 900 Condominium, holding that a first-mortgage foreclosure sale is not a "sale or conveyance" that triggers payment of common charges, and that the statute places the common-charge lien behind the recorded first mortgage.⁹ The Court of Appeals later held in Plotch v Citibank, N.A. that a consolidated mortgage keeps its first-mortgage priority over a common-charge lien recorded afterward.¹⁰ One narrow exception exists: an exclusive non-residential condominium, whose declaration may make the common-charge lien superior to mortgage liens of record.¹¹ RPL § 339-aa governs how long the lien lasts and how the board forecloses it: the lien takes effect when the board files a verified notice of lien with the recording officer and runs until paid or until six years from filing, whichever comes first, and any board member may file the notice if no one has done so within sixty days after the charges came due.¹² The contrast with the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA), which gives associations a true six-month priority ahead of the first mortgage, is stark — and New York has not adopted UCIOA.¹³

2B. Cooperatives: shares, proprietary leases, and UCC Article 9

A cooperative apartment is personal property, not real estate. The buyer receives shares in the cooperative corporation, evidenced by a stock certificate, plus a proprietary lease that grants occupancy of a specific unit; the corporation itself owns the building.¹⁴ No single "Cooperative Act" mirrors the Condominium Act. Instead, the certificate of incorporation, the bylaws, and the proprietary lease govern cooperative corporations, and most organize under the Business Corporation Law, with the Cooperative Corporations Law applying to corporations formed under it.¹⁵ Because the collateral is personal property, a cooperative and its lender enforce unpaid maintenance through UCC Article 9 — the law of secured transactions — rather than RPAPL Article 13 real-property foreclosure.¹⁶ A purchase lender takes a security interest in the shares and proprietary lease, perfects it by filing a UCC-1 financing statement and taking possession of the stock certificate, and on default may sell the collateral at a public or private sale under UCC § 9-610 without going to court.¹⁷ When the collateral is a residential cooperative interest, UCC § 9-611 requires the lender to send a pre-disposition notice at least ninety days before the sale — carrying prescribed homeowner warnings — plus a second notice at least ten days before the sale, and to run a lien search between twenty and thirty days before that second notice.¹⁸ The cooperative corporation's own lien for unpaid maintenance generally outranks the lender's security interest, which is why lenders insist on a recognition agreement that obligates the cooperative to notify the lender of any lease-termination default and to give the lender a chance to cure.¹⁹ A cooperative that wants to enforce unpaid maintenance may proceed against the shares under Article 9 only if it holds a security agreement; otherwise it terminates the proprietary lease and brings a summary holdover proceeding. For managers handling cooperative arrears, the practical lesson is that recovery runs through the proprietary lease and the corporation's statutory lien, not a recorded real-property lien.²⁰

2C. Judicial foreclosure procedure and federal overlays

Condominium common-charge lien foreclosure proceeds "in like manner as a mortgage of real property pursuant to article thirteen" of the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law (RPAPL) — language the Legislature added to RPL § 339-aa in 2025.²¹ RPAPL Article 13 supplies the real-property foreclosure machinery: the complaint, the notice of pendency, a referee to compute, a judgment of foreclosure and sale, the referee's sale with notice and publication, and the referee's deed.²² Lawmakers wrote two residential protections for mortgage foreclosure rather than common-charge foreclosure, and counsel should not assume they reach this far. RPAPL 1304's ninety-day pre-foreclosure notice applies by its terms to a "home loan" made by a lender, assignee, or servicer, and CPLR 3408's mandatory settlement conference applies to a "residential foreclosure action involving a home loan" — a defined term that does not naturally cover a board of managers enforcing a common-charge lien.²³ Rather than stretch RPAPL 1304 to associations, the Legislature in 2025 wrote a separate ninety-day notice into RPL § 339-aa itself, which signals that the pre-existing mortgage notice did not automatically apply.²⁴ New York recognizes an equity of redemption that an owner may exercise until the foreclosure sale, and it provides no post-sale statutory right of redemption; RPAPL § 1353 directs conveyance to the purchaser after the sale, and reinstatement under RPAPL § 1341 is likewise available only before the sale.²⁵ On the federal side, Obduskey v McCarthy & Holthus LLP held that an entity doing no more than nonjudicial foreclosure is generally not a "debt collector" under the FDCPA, except for § 1692f(6); because New York condominium foreclosure runs through the courts, that narrow carve-out does not shield associations and their counsel, and full FDCPA exposure remains.²⁶ The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act can stay enforcement against servicemembers, and the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay halts both condominium and cooperative enforcement the moment a debtor files.²⁷

Section 3 — The New York HOA foreclosure procedural sequence

A. Lien or security interest establishment

Condominiums. The common-charge lien arises under RPL § 339-z, but it takes effect only when the board files a verified notice of lien with the county recording officer, stating the property, the liber and page of the declaration, the record owner, the unit designation, and the amount and date due; from there it runs for up to six years.²⁸ Section 339-z fixes priority: the lien sits behind tax liens and the first mortgage of record, and ahead of most junior encumbrances.²⁹ Cooperatives. No real-property lien gets recorded. The lender perfects its security interest in the shares and proprietary lease by filing a UCC-1 financing statement and taking possession of the stock certificate; the cooperative corporation's maintenance lien flows from the proprietary lease and bylaws and generally outranks the lender.³⁰ Traditional HOAs. A homeowners association that is neither a condominium nor a cooperative draws its lien rights from its recorded CC&Rs rather than a dedicated lien statute, because New York has no comprehensive planned-community statute.³¹

B. Pre-enforcement notice and demand

Condominiums. As of October 16, 2025, RPL § 339-aa requires the board of managers to give the unit owner at least ninety days' written notice, in fourteen-point type, before it starts a foreclosure proceeding; the notice must state the board's intent to foreclose, the property address, and the specific amount due, and the board must serve it at the property address and any other address of record.³² Whether RPAPL 1304 and CPLR 3408 independently reach common-charge foreclosure remains unsettled, and counsel should not assume they do; the dedicated § 339-aa notice is the verified statutory requirement.³³ Cooperatives. The lender serves the UCC § 9-611 ninety-day and ten-day notices and runs the required lien search; the cooperative typically serves a notice to cure and then a notice terminating the proprietary lease.³⁴ All. Because the process runs through the courts, FDCPA notice and validation duties attach, and counsel must check for bankruptcy stays and SCRA-eligible servicemembers before moving forward.³⁵

C. Enforcement: condominium foreclosure versus cooperative remedies

Condominiums. The board forecloses under RPAPL Article 13: it files a summons and complaint and a notice of pendency (lis pendens), wins an order of reference appointing a referee to compute the amount due, secures a judgment of foreclosure and sale, and the referee then conducts a public sale with statutory notice and publication before delivering a deed to the purchaser.³⁶ RPL § 339-aa expressly lets the board seek a money judgment and foreclose at the same time, and demand a reasonable rental and a receiver where the bylaws allow.³⁷ Cooperatives. The lender sells the shares and proprietary lease at a UCC Article 9 public auction without court supervision; the winning bidder takes the shares and then must bring a summary holdover or ejectment proceeding to remove the former shareholder.³⁸ The divergence is dramatic: condominium foreclosure is a multi-month judicial action with referee and publication steps, while cooperative enforcement is a faster nonjudicial sale that shifts the eviction burden onto the buyer.³⁹

D. Post-sale and post-disposition rights and remedies

Condominiums. The foreclosure sale distributes surplus by priority, paying the common-charge lien only after the first mortgage; no post-sale statutory redemption exists, and the purchaser takes possession through standard post-foreclosure eviction.⁴⁰ Because RPL § 339-aa allows a simultaneous money judgment, the board can pursue a personal deficiency against the unit owner when the sale does not cover the arrears.⁴¹ Cooperatives. A UCC disposition distributes surplus under Article 9's priority rules, and the buyer takes possession through a holdover proceeding rather than a redemption-barring foreclosure judgment; the lender may pursue a deficiency under the security agreement, subject to Article 9's commercial-reasonableness limits.⁴²

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

New York's recent legislative attention has landed squarely on notice — when and how an association must warn an owner before it forecloses — and on whether cooperative shareholders deserve the same court-supervised protections that mortgage borrowers already get.

B. Recent rulings

New York's appellate courts are not rewriting association enforcement law. They are doing something more practical — confirming the personal-property character of cooperative share sales, and holding condominium foreclosures to the full procedural rigor of real-property actions.

C. Active legislative debates

The main live debates ask whether to extend mortgage-style procedural protections — chiefly the mandatory settlement conference — to cooperative share foreclosures, and whether to impose reserve-study and disclosure mandates on condominium and cooperative associations.⁴⁹

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

New York is a judicial-foreclosure, non-UCIOA state, and its enforcement landscape turns on an unusually large cooperative housing stock — roughly 450,000 occupied cooperative apartments alongside about 318,000 condominiums in New York City, together making up 22 percent of the city's occupied housing, according to the New York City Comptroller — and the condominium-versus-cooperative split that follows from it.⁵⁰ Condominiums foreclose a subordinate common-charge lien through RPAPL Article 13, while cooperatives enforce a UCC Article 9 share interest without going to court. The contrast with UCIOA super-priority states is sharp: New York gives the residential condominium common-charge lien no six-month priority and subordinates it entirely to the first mortgage of record, while UCIOA and similar statutes grant associations a true six-month priority ahead of the first mortgage.⁵¹ New York also parts ways with CC&R-primary planned-community states, because it has no comprehensive HOA statute; traditional homeowners associations operate under recorded CC&Rs and the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law.⁵² For multi-state operators entering the New York cooperative market, the practical lesson is that cooperative arrears get enforced as personal-property security interests and proprietary-lease terminations — a body of law with no analog in mortgage-and-deed jurisdictions.⁵³

This page is a stable reference, updated quarterly. If you are handling an active matter, confirm the current statutory text, bill status, and case law before you rely on any single item — association enforcement law in New York is changing quickly.

1. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z; N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-610 (New York foreclosure is judicial; the condominium/cooperative enforcement split is foundational) ↩
2. New York Condominium Act, N.Y. Real Prop. Law art. 9-B, § 339-d et seq. ↩
3. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611(f) (cooperative interest is personal property enforced under UCC Article 9) ↩
4. New York State Unified Court System, Court Structure (Supreme Court (trial); Appellate Division (intermediate); Court of Appeals (highest)) ↩
5. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.; Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3901 et seq.; Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 362 ↩
6. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-e (definitions) ↩
7. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z (priority of common-charge lien; exceptions for tax liens, first mortgage of record, and certain subordinate agency mortgages) ↩
8. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z (common-charge lien wholly subordinate to first mortgage of record) ↩
9. Bankers Trust Co. v. Board of Managers of Park 900 Condominium, 81 N.Y.2d 1033 (1993) ↩
10. Plotch v. Citibank, N.A., 2016 N.Y. Slip Op. 03648 (2016) ↩
11. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z (exclusive non-residential condominium exception) ↩
12. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (duration and foreclosure of common-charge lien) ↩
13. Community Associations Institute, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (New York has not adopted UCIOA) ↩
14. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611(f) (cooperative ownership structure: shares plus proprietary lease) ↩
15. Homeowners Protection Bureau, LLC, New York HOA Laws & Resources (Business Corporation Law and Cooperative Corporations Law govern cooperatives; no single co-op act) ↩
16. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-610 (cooperative enforcement under UCC Article 9, not RPAPL Article 13) ↩
17. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-610 (disposition of collateral after default) ↩
18. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611 (ninety-day and ten-day pre-disposition notices; lien search) ↩
19. Lasser Law Group, Cooperative vs. Condominium Lien Priority and Collections Strategy (cooperative maintenance-lien priority; recognition agreements) ↩
20. Legal Services NYC, Can a Lender Foreclose on My Co-op? (enforcement via proprietary-lease termination and holdover proceeding) ↩
21. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (as amended 2025; foreclosure "in like manner as a mortgage of real property pursuant to article thirteen") ↩
22. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law art. 13 (real-property foreclosure procedure) ↩
23. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law § 1304; N.Y. C.P.L.R. 3408 (defined "home loan") ↩
24. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (separate ninety-day notice enacted 2025); 2025 N.Y. Assemb. Bill A3470 ↩
25. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law § 1353 (conveyance after sale); id. § 1341 (reinstatement before sale) ↩
26. Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, 586 U.S. 466, 139 S. Ct. 1029 (2019) ↩
27. Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3901 et seq.; Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 362 (automatic stay) ↩
28. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (verified notice of lien; required contents; six-year duration) ↩
29. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z (priority) ↩
30. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611 (perfection by UCC-1 filing and possession of stock certificate) ↩
31. Homeowners Protection Bureau, LLC, New York HOA Laws & Resources (no comprehensive HOA statute; CC&Rs and N-PCL) ↩
32. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (ninety-day pre-foreclosure notice in fourteen-point type, effective Oct. 16, 2025) ↩
33. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law § 1304; N.Y. C.P.L.R. 3408 (applicability to common-charge foreclosure unsettled) ↩
34. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611 (pre-disposition notices; notice to cure and lease termination) ↩
35. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.; Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 362; Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3901 et seq. ↩
36. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law art. 13 (complaint, notice of pendency, referee, judgment, sale, deed) ↩
37. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (simultaneous money judgment; reasonable rental and receiver) ↩
38. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-610 (disposition); holdover or ejectment for possession ↩
39. Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C., Cooperative Foreclosure: The Accidental Doctrine (process and timeline divergence) ↩
40. N.Y. Real Prop. Acts. Law § 1353 (conveyance to purchaser; no post-sale redemption) ↩
41. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-aa (money judgment for deficiency) ↩
42. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-615 (surplus and deficiency rules); holdover for possession ↩
43. 2025 N.Y. Assemb. Bill A3470 / S. 7413, ch. 433 of the Laws of 2025 (signed Oct. 16, 2025; Assembly 144-0, May 21, 2025; Senate 53-0, June 6, 2025) ↩
44. 2025 N.Y. Assemb. Bill A3874 (cooperative foreclosure settlement conference; proposed CPLR Rule 3411) ↩
45. 2025 N.Y. Assemb. Bill A8945 (capital reserve studies; proposed N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-mm) ↩
46. Walsh v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, 217 A.D.3d 802, 2023 N.Y. Slip Op. 03256 (2d Dep't 2023) ↩
47. Board of Managers of Poseidon Condominium Ass'n v. Costantino Prop. Mgt., LLC, 224 A.D.3d 972 (2d Dep't 2024) ↩
48. AMK Capital Corp. v. Plotch, 230 A.D.3d 26, 2024 N.Y. Slip Op. 03324 (1st Dep't 2024) ↩
49. 2025 N.Y. Assemb. Bills A3874 & A8945 (pending; reflecting active debates over cooperative settlement conferences and reserve-study mandates) ↩
50. N.Y.C. Comptroller, Spotlight: New York City's Homeowner Housing Market (≈450,000 cooperative apartments; ≈318,000 condominiums; 22% of occupied stock) ↩
51. N.Y. Real Prop. Law § 339-z (no six-month priority; contrast with UCIOA super-priority) ↩
52. Homeowners Protection Bureau, LLC, New York HOA Laws & Resources (no comprehensive HOA statute; N-PCL and CC&Rs) ↩
53. N.Y. U.C.C. Law § 9-611 (cooperative arrears enforced as personal-property security interests) ↩