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If you have a vacant rent-stabilized apartment, you may be able to take advantage of a money-making opportunity. If you rent the apartment to a commercial or professional tenant who will use it solely for nonresidential purposes (for example, as a medical office), the apartment will no longer be covered by rent stabilization. In other words, you can negotiate with the professional tenant and charge whatever rent the market will allow.

This April marks the 44th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act's (FHA) passage—the landmark legislation signed into law on April 11, 1968, that prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, sex, and, as amended, disability or family status. In 2010, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a report stating that more than 10,000 people filed housing discrimination complaints in 2...

Tenants sometimes obstruct fire exits, including fire escapes, with a variety of items. Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) inspectors and the fire department routinely find such things as flowerpots, mops, buckets, brooms, and bicycles on fire escapes. These items could prevent escape from an apartment if there's a fire. Tenants also block public hallways with such items as bicycles or baby carriages. Such obstructions could prevent tenants fro...

In the March 2012 issue, we discussed how to overcome stall tactics used by tenants to delay rent restoration orders. Oftentimes, tenants will try to introduce new service complaints for defective conditions after the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) has issued a rent cut, at the time you've filed an application with the DHCR to reinstate the original rent.

When you apply to restore the rent after getting hit with a rent cut for reduced services, tenants often try to delay or undermine your application. They'll do so by complaining of defective conditions that weren't listed in the original service reduction order. But you can defeat this stalling tactic by tenants. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) has ruled that the existence of defective conditions that weren't listed in the service reduct...

When you apply to the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) for major capital improvement (MCI) rent hikes, you want the DHCR to process your application as quickly as possible and grant your rent hike. The sooner it grants your rent hike, the sooner you can start collecting it.

When you hire an attorney to start a nonpayment case in housing court against a tenant, you'll want to get it resolved as quickly as possible. To make this happen, it's important to give your attorney all the information she needs right from the start. Otherwise you could face court delays or have your nonpayment case dismissed.

Owners and managers frequently receive a variety of complaints about their tenants' conduct. At some point, it's likely that you may field allegations about intolerable odors from a particular apartment, or about apartment conditions that create a breeding ground for insects, or give rise to fire hazards or other potentially dangerous situations. If these allegations are true, you may have a compulsive hoarder as a tenant.

When a nonregulated tenant's lease expires, an owner is under no legal obligation to renew it, unless the lease itself gives the tenant a renewal option. The situation is very different though for rent-stabilized tenants. Generally, as long as the rent is paid, you must offer renewal leases to rent-stabilized tenants.

If a rent-regulated tenant complains to the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) about painting problems, such as peeling paint, in his apartment, you could get hit with a DHCR rent cut for reduced services.