What the co-op questionnaire actually asks

Why every lender sends a different form

Fannie Mae publishes Form 1074, Request For Cooperative Project Information, a two page form whose own instructions call it optional. Freddie Mac publishes no cooperative questionnaire at all. The one standardized piece is the building safety addendum, Form 1076A/476A, which applies to cooperative projects by its own first line and travels with nearly every file since December 2021.

With no mandatory long form, each lender collects the same underwriting facts on its own layout. One asks delinquency in months behind, another in days. One counts owners, another units. The substance underneath is stable, because it comes from one place, the agency eligibility rules for co-op share loans, and a desk that can answer the whole substance can answer any lender's arrangement of it.

The condominium review change of August 3, 2026 is worth placing here, mostly for what it did not do. Its project standards changes, the retirement of Limited Review among them, are condominium changes; cooperatives were never in Limited Review, so a co-op file was already answered the long way and still is. What does reach a co-op file from the 2026 letters is the insurance half, including the $50,000 per unit deductible cap for applications dated on or after July 1, 2026.

The corporation itself

A cooperative is a corporation that owns the building and grants occupancy through a proprietary lease, and the first questions are corporate. Whether the corporation qualifies as a housing corporation under Section 216 of the Internal Revenue Code, as stated by its accountant or counsel, usually in a note to the audited financial statements. How many shares are issued and outstanding, and how many are allocated to the unit being financed, both off the share allocation schedule. Whether the corporation holds title to the land and the building, which the deed answers, and whether any project facilities are leased to or by the corporation.

Sale and sponsor questions follow the same corporate logic. Lenders ask how many shares have been sold to people living in their units, whether the sponsor or any single investor holds a concentration of shares, and whether the sponsor still controls the board. In New York a sponsor holding regulated rental units is its own well worn question with its own documentation.

The blanket mortgage, which has no condo equivalent

A condominium association does not carry a mortgage on the units. A cooperative corporation usually does, and every lender's form carries a table for it: balance, lien position, monthly payment, rate, whether the rate is fixed, the remaining term, and whether it balloons. The answers come off the mortgage statement and the note, and a balloon inside its final months is one of the few facts that stops a file on its own.

Beside the mortgage sit the lease questions. The proprietary lease must run at least as long as the share loan, so its expiry date is asked everywhere, and where the corporation sits on leased land the ground lease term drives the same arithmetic. Lenders also ask which recognition agreement form the corporation executes. In New York that is customarily the Aztec form, a market convention rather than an agency requirement, and the questionnaire records which form is used without opining on it.

Money questions are answered from the audit, not a budget

The condominium reserve test, a percentage of assessment income set aside, does not apply to cooperatives. The co-op financial test is read from the audited statements: whether the year ran a deficit, whether a deficit exceeds 5 percent, and whether back to back years ran losses. That is why a co-op request asks for the two most recent audited statements or corporate returns where a condo request asks for a budget.

Taxes sit at the corporation level too, so the form asks about real estate tax abatements and exemptions by name, their dollar value, and when they expire. In New York this is the J-51 and 421-a question. A flip tax gets transcribed with its structure, flat, per share, or a percentage, and shown against the 5 percent of value figure the rules set, because eligibility turns on the documents that created it. Occupancy arrives as a grid, owner occupied, then sponsor and investor holdings split between vacant, market rent and regulated rent, and delinquency is counted in owners rather than units.

What a managing agent sends to answer it all

Eleven documents answer every version of the form. The two most recent annual audited statements or corporate tax returns. The blanket mortgage statement or note. The proprietary lease and the recognition agreement form in use. The certificate of incorporation and bylaws with the share allocation schedule. The ground lease, where the corporation does not own its land. The schedule of unsold shares and any flip tax provision. The tax bill with any abatement paperwork. The offering plan and amendments where the building was converted. Insurance declarations, the delinquency count, and recent board minutes close the set.

Nothing on that list involves shareholder names, account numbers or payment details. A questionnaire describes the project, never the people, and a request that wants personal information is asking for something else.

How a completed one arrives from this desk

A cooperative order comes back as the reviewed package plus everything the managing agent signs: a signature-ready questionnaire carrying every established answer, the completed Fannie Form 1074, the completed safety addendum, and the lender's own form completed on its own layout when it arrives with the order. The published example shows the whole set, <a href="larkfield_coop_form.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the signature-ready questionnaire and <a href="larkfield_1074.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the completed Form 1074, on a fictional Queens building.

Co-op questionnaire questions, answered

The questions managing agents and processors actually ask about cooperative questionnaires, answered from the published agency requirements.

Is there a standard co-op questionnaire form?

No long one. Fannie Mae Form 1074 is a two page optional form, Freddie Mac publishes none, and the December 2021 building safety addendum applies to cooperatives as well as condominiums. In practice a co-op file is answered on the lender's own form.

Does Fannie Mae buy co-op share loans?

Yes, under its own eligibility chapter for cooperative projects, which is why the questionnaire asks corporate questions a condo form never asks. The condominium rules, including the reserve percentage test, are not the rulebook a co-op is judged on.

What is a recognition agreement?

The agreement by which the corporation recognizes the share lender's rights in a unit. Lenders ask which form the corporation executes. In New York the Aztec form is customary, as market convention rather than agency requirement, and the lender typically supplies it for signature.

Why does the questionnaire ask about the building's own mortgage?

Because the corporation usually carries one and every shareholder stands behind a slice of it. The lender needs the balance, rate, term and balloon status, off the mortgage statement, and a balloon in its final months can stop a file by itself.

How is co-op delinquency counted?

In owners behind on their obligations to the corporation, rather than in units, and most forms ask it as two or more months rather than a day count. The count still includes special assessments.

Is a ground lease disqualifying?

Not by itself. A cooperative may hold its land in fee or as a leasehold, and what matters is the term and what the lease does to the proprietary lease behind the share loan. Reading a particular lease is the lender's counsel's work, and a questionnaire reports the facts.