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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 21st
The City’s Department of Transportation is moving forward with its plan to place the 1.5-mile section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that runs between Sands Street and Atlantic Avenue and passes beneath the Brooklyn Promenade. Yesterday, it presented its two options. Regardless of which option they choose, the project is expected to take at least several years, with construction set to begin in either 2020 or 2021, and will cost significantly more than the 2016 projection of $1.7 billion.
The first option, which is preferred by city officials and was referred to as the “innovate approach,” would take six years to complete and create an entirely new triple … read more
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LandlordsNY MemberWhat Landlords Need to Know About Heating Season...Revised
From October 1 through May 31, landlords will be responsible for keeping apartment temperatures above 62 degrees Fahrenheit between 10 pm and 6 am. Prior to last year, the base temperature was 55.
The seven-degree change is the result of a bill that was signed into law (Local Law 86) by Mayor Bill de Blasio on May 24, 2017. In addition to the increase, the law also eliminates the outdoor temperature threshold. All apartments must stay above 62 degrees during heating season between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am without exception.
But wait—unfortunately, there’s more.
As expected, landlords who repeatedly fail to comply with the new law will face … read more
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Preparing for Heating Season with Heat Watch
With heating season just around the corner, landlords need to begin thinking about how to cut utility costs. Heating costs comprise, on average, 6.4% of the operating costs for stabilized buildings, and the Rent Guidelines Board is projecting that they will rise this year by 1.1%. (Note: The RGB projected that fuel costs would rise 5.8% in 2018. They actual rose 16.4%.)
As a landlord, you have two options when it comes to managing these costs. The first is to hope that the prices of oil and natural gas don’t fluctuate too wildly and remain relatively low so that you don’t find yourself with unexpectedly high bills. This is called the ostrich approach.
The … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 20th
The City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development will now be able to publicly list landlords on its Speculation Watch List if there is evidence that they overpaid when buying a rent-regulated building. According to HPD, this behavior suggests that the landlord is planning to push out the stabilized tenants and to convert the building’s units into market rate apartments.Crain’s New York has more.
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RXR Realty has announced plans to renovate a 10-building complex across the street from Brooklyn Navy Yard that was once the site of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company printing press factory. The … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 18th
Home builder sentiment was a 67 in September on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, or HMI. This is up from 64 last year and down from its most recent high of 70 in May. Anything over 50 is considered positive.
While the demand for housing continues to be high for a variety of reasons, builder confidence has been stifled because of rising costs associated with the threat of tariffs and the persistent high price of lumber, even if the cost of lumber has declined from its record high last spring. Nearly 600 out of the 6,000 products on the Trump administration’s initial $100 billion round … read more
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Introducing Stratco, the LNY Rent Regulation Expert
Managing a property with rent stabilized tenants can be an exhausting business. The day-to-day operations require owners to comply with and navigate the hundreds of applicable laws and to issue a seemingly endless list of notices that need to be sent to each and every tenant each and every year. Should owners want to make building-wide improvements or renovate vacant apartments, they must comply with a level of scrutiny that can be difficult to adhere to. Furthermore, even minor mistakes on a piece of paperwork or an improperly itemized invoice can lead to violations and accusations of overcharge.
While we at LandlordsNY always stress the importance of … read more
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LandlordsNY Member
Case of the Week: Capital 155 E. 55th, LLC v Garden House Sch. of N.Y.
Even though the United States Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that corporations are people with rights similar to those of flesh and blood humans, stabilization law in New York is clear that they are different from humans in one crucial sense: They can’t retain the claim to a stabilized apartment in perpetuity. This was established perhaps most famously by Manocherian v. Lenox Hill Hospital, a landmark case in the Appellate Division, First Department: “[A] corporation is entitled to a renewal lease where the lease specifies a particular individual as the occupant and no perpetual tenancy is possible.”
Yet another decision from the … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 17th
The team designated to redevelop the long-vacant Greenpoint Hospital was announced by the City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development last Thursday. Hudson Companies, St. Nicks Alliance, and Project Renewal will be tasked with overseeing the project, while Magnusson Architecture and Planning and Architecture Outfit will design what will become a four-building complex with 512 units that will become senior housing or affordable apartments. The redevelopment plan will be comprised of two phases.
Phase One will see the construction of a new, 267-unit building and the relocation of a 200-bed shelter to a space on the southern portion of the former … read more
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Introducing Marshal Robert Renzulli
As any landlord who has endured Housing Court knows, the eviction process is expensive, time-consuming, and filled with a near-endless array of technicalities and pitfalls that can prolong the proceeding for years. Perhaps the most difficult pill to swallow is that a Judgment of Possession does not entitle you to tell the tenant that they no longer have a right to remain on your property. It is just another step along the road, and it is one that many landlords have difficulty effectively navigating.
Once you’ve successfully received a Judgment of Possession from Housing Court, the next step in the eviction process is to contact a New York City Marshal and ask them to … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 14th
Rental markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn were largely static in August when compared with data from last month and last year. As Douglas Elliman reports, the median monthly rent in Manhattan was $3,400, which was on par with July and represents a 1.2 percent decrease from last August. The median monthly rent in Brooklyn, meanwhile, was $2,950, which was also on par with July. It was a 1.7 percent increase from last August. Concession rates, meanwhile, continued to rise as they have for the last 39 months in Manhattan and 31 months in Brooklyn.What is interesting about the August rental data, however, is that the number of … read more
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LandlordsNY Member
What Landlords Need to Know About Green Exercise Equipment
Yes, green exercise equipment. Invariably, the first question any person who sees those three words all in a row will ask is: What makes it green? First of all, most of the machines are at least partially green. As in the color. It would be foolish from a marketing perspective to make a piece of equipment that is labeled "green" and paint it anything else. Secondly, these machines are considered green because they harness the energy that your tenants exert while exercising to produce electricity.
It’s not a particularly new idea. Many of the headlights and taillights that you see on bicycles are powered in a similar fashion. However, the … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 13th
A new report released by the Citizens Budget Commission shows that Staten Island and the Bronx pay the highest effective property tax rates out of the five boroughs despite having market values well below properties in places like northern Brooklyn and much of Manhattan. The report examined one- to three-family homes and condos up to three stories, known as Class 1 properties, and found that the median homeowner in Staten Island or the Bronx had to pay property taxes that amounted to more than 1 percent of the value of their homes. In the more expensive parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, however, the median homeowner paid … read more -
LandlordsNY Member
Case of the Week: Zielinski v. Kiwak
This installment of the LNY Case of the Week brings up two points that every landlord should remember. First, if you go into court without documentation that clearly shows that you paid a certain amount for a service due to a tenant’s mismanagement of your property, the judge will often treat it as though you spent nothing at all. Keep records of everything. Second, if you attempt to unilaterally raise the rent on a month-to-month tenant, but accept the previous amount without so much as a formal grumble, you will never recover the difference in court.
Before digesting all of this, though, here are the facts.
Tenant Wojciech Kiwak moved into an apartment during or … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 12th
The New York City Bar Association released a report yesterday asserting that lawmakers in New York City do not have the authority to create a bill that would create a retail rent control system. Specifically, it claims that the bill being considered by the city, which would require landlords to offer retail tenants 10-year lease renewals under conditions to be negotiated between the tenant and the landlord and would give tenants a lease extension through binding arbitration if they fail to strike a deal, would not be legal.
However, there is precedent for such a system. Between 1945 and 1963, the state had a similar program … read more
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LandlordsNY Briefing for September 7th
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly job report this morning and the numbers are better than anticipated. U.S. employers added 201,000 jobs in August, beating the median forecast of economists surveyed by Reuters, which was 191,000. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained at 3.9 percent, while average hourly wages increased at a rate not seen in nine years (2.9 percent from last year, to $27.16). The industries that saw the strongest gains in employment levels were health care, wholesale trade, construction, and transportation. The professional and business services sector also performed well.This is all good … read more
