Real estate brokers, lawyers and property managers all said boards had significantly stepped up their financial scrutiny of prospective buyers in the last year. Condo boards technically cannot reject prospective buyers, but brokers say some condo and co-op boards now use delaying tactics and requests for further documentation as a strategy to drive away certain buyers. It was a year in which many real estate rules seemed to have been turned on their heads. Condos behaved like co-ops. Buyers with mortgages were looked at more favorably than all-cash buyers. Why? The reasoning goes that since mortgages are so hard to come by, anyone who gets one has been thoroughly vetted by the bank. It also became much more common for buildings — co-ops and condos alike — to ask buyers to put large sums of money in escrow as a way of guaranteeing that they would not default on their monthly carrying charges. Many buildings asked buyers to put six months’ to two years’ wo...