If you sign a vacancy lease with a tenant between Oct. 1, 2015, and Sept. 30, 2016, the new order issued on June 29 by the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB)—RGBO #47—lets you collect the vacancy increases permitted under the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997 (RRRA).
On June 29, in a 7 to 2 vote, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board decided to freeze rents for rent-stabilized tenants with one-year leases. This had never been done before in the board’s 46-year history. With the rent freeze, Mayor de Blasio delivered on a campaign promise to freeze one...
On June 25, Governor Cuomo and leaders of the New York State Legislature agreed to strengthen the state’s rent regulations and to overhaul the 421-a tax abatement program. The legislative session had been originally scheduled to end on June 17, but negotiations continued into the following...
A difficult situation an owner may face is when a tenant withholds all or part of the monthly rent over a claimed problem in his apartment. For example, the tenant may claim no heat or hot water or a broken dishwasher. If you investigate the problem and find that it exists, you must then decide...
You must file an Annual Apartment Registration application with the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) for every rent-stabilized apartment you own by July 31, 2015. As in past years, the penalty for not filing is stiff: You can’t collect a rent increase—or even apply...
If you have a tenant who’s paying a monthly rent of $2,500 or more for a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment, it might be time to send out the second of two Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) forms that may eventually lead to deregulation of the apartment. If you...
When legal rents in rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments reach a level of $2,500 per month, two things occur. These apartments are now subject to vacancy deregulation. If the apartment is occupied, you are allowed to initiate an annual income certification process and deregulate the...
Cotenants are two or more tenants who rent the same apartment under the same lease. Sometimes cotenants sign at the same time or a cotenant may be added later to an existing lease. In New York City, due to the short supply and high demand for apartments, there’s a good chance that a...
Local Law 84 of 2009 requires all large buildings in the city to annually measure and publically disclose their energy consumption. LL84 standardizes this process and captures information with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) free online benchmarking tool called Portfolio...
The Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) is mandated by law to establish yearly rent adjustments for rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. The board holds an annual series of public meetings and hearings to consider research from staff and testimony from owners, tenants, advocacy groups, and...
The recent appointment of Carmelyn Malalis as the new chair of the NYC Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has coincided with renewed legislative interest in the Commission’s fair housing testing program. Commissioner Malalis recently testified in front of the City Council regarding Intro....
Back in December, an Upper West Side woman accused of earning thousands of dollars by renting her rent-controlled duplex on Airbnb was ordered to stop by a Manhattan judge. And in January of this year, apartment-sharing websites including Airbnb were taken to task by City Council members who...
