Co-op Application submitted
It’s been submitted. I nearly ran out of paper printing out documents, then spent the morning making the requisite seven (7!) copies to ship with the original. A tree was probably killed for the paper that was used — when will co-op boards accept, say, a PDF by email? The total package didn’t fit in the FedEx “large” box, so I split the shipment across two of them. It should get there tomorrow, though, in retrospect, I should have just hopped a cab during lunch and dropped it off. The management company is near Penn Station, and it would have gotten there faster, for less money. (On the other hand, I actually forgot an entire copy; I found it after I came back from the FedEx office because I had forgotten the ship-to address. Lucky, that.)
The total shipping weight, with the boxes and padding, was 14 pounds.
Update: Upon reflection, this was much more work than I remember, even though I remember there being a lot of work the first time around. The first time, I was working with the real estate broker representing the apartment, and I now realize that he took care of a lot of things, such as shaping the application and the massive chore of photocopying and collating the application. This time around, I’m doing all of this work by myself (while having other things going on), and I have more paper to file, if only from the accretion of new financial accounts. Most of my documents are filed away digitally, so the extra documents only required time and paper to print, so this wasn’t too terrible.
In terms of a co-op purchase versus a house/condo purchase (I’m guessing on what’s needed for the latter), the co-op probably requires somewhat more than twice as much time and effort to get through. The house/condo presumably only requires the contract and mortgage application, plus some miscellaneous. The co-op application itself is at least as time consuming as the contract and mortage application, and there are extra miscellaneous items to work through, such as the co-op board interview (which should be relatively trivial and stress-free this time around, if only because of the special circumstances). This is without the chore of, say, making and collating eight copies for the individual board members.
In terms of work, the co-op application may be deterrent enough, without the bother of the board interview. You really have to want the place to go through at least twice the work, compared to a house/condo, so there’s going to be a self-selection issue there. The board interview is somewhat prefunctory, with that thinking.