A recent newspaper article reports that between 2009 and 2012, a total of 117 rental buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn were converted to cooperative or condominium ownership.1 Many of the units contained therein were deregulated. This article explores what rights tenants of these units have vis-à-vis rent-regulated tenants when a building is being converted, if and Full Article…
Owners Should Never Gamble With Liquidated Damage Clauses
By: Adam Bailey and Dov Treiman January 14, 2015 Real estate leases are, by their nature, bets the parties are placing on what the future may hold. Both landlord interests and tenant interests try to hedge their bets by inserting clauses to produce certain results in the event of an uncertain future. Chief amongst these Full Article…
Sprinkler System Leases the New Letter of the Law
By: Adam Leitman Bailey & Dov Treiman October 9th, 2014 A new sprinkler system law coming into effect December 3 could leave landlords guessing about their obligations. Effective December 3, 2014, all residential leases in New York State require a notice to the tenant about the presence or absence of sprinkler systems in the “leased Full Article…
How To Overcome Tenant Resistance To An MCI Application
By: Adam Leitman Bailey & Dov Treiman September, 2014 Part I: How To Overcome Tenant Resistance To An MCI Application I. General Overview Major Capital Improvement Increases (MCI’s) are a concept that parties can contract for if they are not subject to rent regulation. However, generally speaking, unregulated residential tenants rarely do contract for them. Full Article…
High Rent Vacancy Not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card
By: Adam Leitman Bailey & Dov Treiman August 22nd, 2014 Throughout the residential housing industry, there is dangerous ignorance of the amendments promulgated this year, amending the Rent Stabilization Code. All owners should be reading as much as possible about these amendments. Business is simply not the same as it was. One of the massive Full Article…
Court Grants License To Change Licensing Law Rules
By: Adam Leitman Bailey & John M. Desiderio August 13th, 2014 Since at least as early as 1849, in the case of Dolittle v. Eddy,1 New York law has defined a license as the “authority to enter on the lands of another, and do a particular act or series of acts, without possessing any interest Full Article…
How to Use A Tenants’ Association to Defeat an MCI Application
I. General Overview Major Capital Improvement Increases (MCI’s) are a concept that parties can contract for if they are not subject to rent regulation. However, generally speaking, unregulated residential tenants rarely do contract for them. They are therefore, in a practical sense, uniquely belonging to the world of rent regulation and are a means whereby Full Article…
Evicting a Tenant for Having Too Many Residents or Violating the Roommate Law
By: Adam Leitman Bailey & Dov Treiman For middle class American society, the idea of the minimum amount of space one would want to live in is vastly larger than standards accepted as absolutely normal in other times, places, and cultures. Consider that a 64 square foot igloo is commonly said to comfortably house five Full Article…