A condo disclosure bill passed the New York Senate 58–1, and the industry killed it in the Assembly
A condo disclosure bill passed the New York Senate 58–1, and the industry killed it in the Assembly
2026-09-15 · New York · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
A bill requiring New York condominium and cooperative boards to hand inspection reports, engineering reports and permits to purchasers — and to file every engineering report with the local building department — passed the State Senate 58–1 in June 2025, died in the Assembly, was revived, reached third reading again, and was parked in the Rules Committee on June 5, 2026. It is the clearest example this session of organised industry opposition beating a near-unanimous Senate vote.1
S7541 is a Surfside bill, and unlike most it says so at length. Its section 1 is a legislative-intent section, which is unusual in New York drafting and worth quoting because it explains the whole design:
“This Legislature hereby finds that on June 24, 2021, Champlain Towers South, a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Florida experienced a partial collapse that resulted in the deaths of 98 residents, becoming the third-deadliest non-deliberate structural engineering failure in United States history. In the wake of such a tragedy, this Legislature understands that there are currently no existing statewide regulations which would require that condominium or cooperative housing associations' property management company or board of managers make information regarding any inspections, permits, or engineering reports available to unit owners and purchasers.”2
Note what it is not
The intent section goes on to state that the bill would make New York “the third state, following Florida and New Jersey, to have strengthened transparency regulations on condominiums and co-ops following the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse.”
That framing is precise, and the distinction matters. This is a disclosure bill, not an inspection mandate. It requires a board to tell people what it already knows. It does not require anyone to look. New York still has no statewide milestone structural-inspection requirement of the kind Florida enacted — our New York condo safety inspections page covers what does and does not apply.
The purchaser-disclosure duty
New RPL § 339-mm would require that when a buyer contracts to purchase, “the property management company or board of managers shall provide the buyer with records of the most recent inspection and engineering reports and permits for the subject property,” and that any potential buyer may request a copy. That much tracks the estoppel-package practice New York boards already run; see our estoppel and resale page.
The provision that produced the reaction
Section 3 rewrites RPL § 339-q, which currently governs what a board must keep on file. The rewrite adds inspections, engineering reports and permits to the list, requires copies to be “provided digitally and physically to unit owners whenever any revision, amendment, inspection, report or plan is made or issued” — and then adds subdivision 2:
“Should the board of managers fail to comply with any item within this section, the office of the attorney general of the state of New York shall reserve the right to void any offering plan permitting the operation of the condominium or cooperative.”
That is the sentence opponents fastened on, and it is easy to see why. The remedy is not proportionate to the breach: any non-compliance with any item in the section triggers a discretionary power to void the instrument the building operates under. Subdivision 3 adds that nothing in the section limits a unit owner's right to bring a civil or criminal action against the board.
The 60-day municipal filing duty is the operationally biggest change
Section 4's subdivision 3 is short and its consequences are not:
“Any inspection or engineering report completed by a consultant or engineer on behalf of a unit owner, the board of managers, or the property management company for any condominium or co-op structure shall be filed with the local municipal building department, local health department or code enforcement officials within sixty days.”
Three consequences follow, and none of them is about the purchaser.
It creates a permanent public record of known defects. An engineering report commissioned to scope a repair becomes a municipal filing. That record is discoverable, FOIL-able, and available to an insurer at renewal and to a lender running a project review. Our page on insurance requirements covers why that matters in the current market.
It reaches reports commissioned by unit owners, not just by the board. An owner's own engineer's report on their own water intrusion would be filable. Who files it, and whether the board is responsible for a report it never saw, is not answered in the text.
It runs on a 60-day clock with no stated enforcement of its own — the enforcement is the § 339-q(2) offering-plan power above.
Who killed it, and what they said
Habitat Magazine reported in June 2025 that a co-op and condo transparency bill passed the Senate 58–1 and was killed in the Assembly when its Assembly sponsor withdrew support, after opposition from the Council of New York Cooperatives & Condominiums and the Presidents Co-op and Condo Council. Quoted there, the PCCC called the bill “the equivalent of a death sentence,” argued that “shareholders and unit-owners already have the legal right to access building records,” and that “New York has one of the most mature and well-regulated co-op and condo sectors in the country.”3
That article does not print a bill number. The identification rests on the 58–1 tally, which matches S7541's verified roll call of June 11, 2025 exactly — 58 aye, 1 nay (Oberacker), 4 excused.
The definitions decide the scope, and they are wide
Section 2 adds three definitions to RPL § 339-e. “Engineering reports” means “any report completed by a certified engineer or architect on behalf of a property management company, the board of managers, a municipality, or the state of New York for the purpose of evaluating if a property has significant mechanical or structural damages.” “Inspections” reaches reports by a municipal employee or a contractor working for a municipality or management company “for the purpose of ensuring a property meets local building codes, health and safety standards, or fire code, or to evaluate if a property has significant mechanical or structural damage.”
For a New York City building, that definition captures a great deal of what already exists: facade filings, parapet observations, parking-structure assessments, gas-piping certifications. The bill would route all of it to purchasers and, in the case of engineering reports, back to the municipality that in many cases generated the requirement.
Status, and one thing to be careful about
The bill has no Senate-Assembly companion — the official S7541 page records “No Same As.” CAI's 2026 end-of-session report pairs it with an Assembly bill numbered A8337; we were not able to verify that a bill of that number exists as a companion, so we are not asserting it. Treat the pairing as unconfirmed.
Its effective-date clause reads: “This act shall take effect on the one hundred eightieth day after it shall have become a law.” No sponsor's memorandum is posted.
Bills sitting in Senate Rules on September 15, 2026 have not died — in a two-year session they expire on December 31, 2026. Rules is where bills wait for a possible return.
Related New York HOA Topics
- S7541, New York State Senate bill page — status, Senate roll call 58-1, and action history ↩
- S7541 full text including the legislative-intent section and proposed RPL §§ 339-e, 339-q and 339-mm ↩
- Habitat Magazine, June 24, 2025 — reporting on the Assembly defeat and the opposition from CNYC and the Presidents Co-op and Condo Council ↩
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