NYC COPA Law: What Small Building Owners Need to Know

Intro 905-A passed 38 to 9, with two abstentions, and now sits on Mayor Mamdani's desk, per Bisnow's report on the vote. The mayor endorsed the bill when Council Member Sandy Nurse reintroduced it in May, so a signature is expected rather than in doubt. An earlier version passed in December 2025 and was vetoed by Mayor Adams.

The Council's October 22 press release lays out the mechanics in one paragraph. Owners who intend to sell a covered property must notify HPD and every qualified entity. Those entities then get 20 days to submit a statement of interest, 70 days to make a first offer, and a right of first refusal if the owner later takes an offer from anyone else.

The law takes effect one year after it becomes law, per the bill text on the Council's Legistar record. If the mayor signs this fall, the first COPA notices go out in late 2027. HPD has that year to write rules and certify the nonprofits.

The bill applies only to a class A multiple dwelling with 4 or more dwelling units. A one-, two-, or three-family house is outside COPA entirely, whatever its violation history. That describes a large share of small-owner holdings in Brooklyn and Queens.

There is a second carve-out for live-in owners. A building with 5 or fewer units is excluded if the owner occupies one of them as a permanent residence. A four-unit rowhouse where you live on the parlor floor is not a covered property.

The exemptions list in § 26-863 also removes the transfers that are not really sales: refinancing to keep ownership, foreclosure and deeds in lieu, bankruptcy, eminent domain, inheritance, and transfers among certain family members. A hardship waiver in § 26-866 lets HPD set aside any requirement when compliance would cause undue financial hardship.

Being over 4 units is necessary but not sufficient. A building is a subject property only if it also meets at least one of six conditions, all of which come from the bill's definition in § 26-852:

The last row catches buildings that took city financing and signed a regulatory agreement. The other five are about distress, and four of them run through HPD's violation database. Advocates originally pitched a bill covering roughly 10,000 buildings; the Brick Underground report on the vote puts the Council's estimate for the narrowed version at about 2,100 buildings, with HPD's later estimate at 3,400.

The violation trigger is the one a typical small owner can actually drift into, so it is worth reading closely. The bill counts open class B (hazardous) and class C (immediately hazardous) violations that have been open for more than 60 days and had a correction deadline within the prior three years. It sums those open violations across every day of the prior 365 days, divides by 365, and divides again by the number of dwelling units.

The result has to be 3 or more. For an 8-unit walk-up, that means averaging 24 open B and C violations every day for a full year, and 36 for a 12-unit building. That is not one bad winter; it is a building where nothing gets certified as corrected.

COPA does not reach the owner who gets a heat violation in January and clears it by February. It reaches the owner who stops certifying corrections. The trigger counts only hazardous violations left open past 60 days, so the simplest way to stay outside the law is the one HPD already asks for: fix the condition, file the certification, and watch the open count on HPDONLINE fall back to zero.

The 60-day detail matters. A violation you correct and certify inside that window never enters the average, which is exactly the certification workflow in our HPD violations guide. Class C heat and hot water conditions are the fastest to accumulate between now and May 31, and they carry the steepest daily penalties on their own.

The timeline is written in calendar days, and most of it sits before you can sign with a market buyer. The steps below come from §§ 26-855 through 26-859 of the bill:

If no nonprofit files a statement of interest, the owner is free to market the building after 20 days. If one does and the offer is rejected, the open-market sale can proceed after the 70-day offer period, but every later outside offer still triggers the 15-day match right. Plan on roughly three months of friction on a covered sale, and more if a nonprofit wants the building.

Selling a covered property without running the process is expensive. The bill sets a civil penalty of up to 15% of the sale price, with no dollar cap, and gives qualified entities a private right of action for compensatory damages, injunctive relief, and legal fees. The statute of limitations runs two years from the day the deed is recorded.

On a $3 million walk-up, 15% is $450,000. That is the number to weigh against the 20-day notice, which costs nothing. Owners' groups have called the bill a scheme to take private property, per Bisnow, and brokers expect it to slow distressed sales; none of that changes what a seller has to do once the law is live.

None of this is enforceable until late 2027, which makes the next twelve months the window to make sure your building is never a subject property. Five things to do now:

• Pull your open violation count on HPDONLINE and sort by class. Anything B or C that is open past 60 days is a COPA data point, not just an HPD one.
• Certify every correction you have already made. Repaired but uncertified violations stay open in the database and count against you.
• Check whether you are in AEP. HPD designates buildings on or about January 31 each year, based on B and C counts and emergency repair charges, per the HPD Alternative Enforcement Program page. Discharge requires clearing all heat and hot water violations and at least 80% of the rest.
• Keep the property registration current. A valid HPD registration is required to discharge from AEP, and an expired one blocks certifications.
• If a sale is on the horizon, run the trigger test first. A building that is clean on all six conditions sells on the ordinary schedule; one that trips any of them needs the COPA calendar built into the contract.

Most of this is already on the annual compliance checklist for small buildings. COPA just raises the price of ignoring it from a daily fine to a penalty measured against the sale price.

For owners of stabilized buildings, COPA lands on top of a 0% rent guideline that started October 1 and a sales market already split between clean free-market product and distressed stabilized stock. The buildings COPA targets are the ones where deferred maintenance has already shown up in the HPD record, which is the same stock buyers were discounting before the vote.

The practical read is that the law rewards operators who keep the violation count near zero. That was true for financing, insurance, and resale value before October 22. It is now also the line between a 20-day notice and a 90-day process.