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On March 27, Mayor de Blasio appointed four new members to the Rent Guidelines Board. During his campaign against Republican Joe Lhota in October, de Blasio said that he would push the Rent Guidelines Board to freeze rents when it votes in June. The mayor doesn’t have direct authority over the board, so his primary influence is through his appointments.
Cash-flowing rental properties allow owners to build wealth over the long term in the form of an appreciating asset while also generating monthly income. RealtyTrac recently performed a nationwide analysis of rental returns for each county. It calculated the gross rental yield by taking the 2014 fair-market rent for a three-bedroom home multiplied by 12 (months) and then dividing that 12-month total by the median sales price of residential properties in the co...
In a recently filed lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, two building owners and three landlord groups have asked the court to declare many of the newly amended rent stabilization regulations and the actions of the state's Tenant Protection Unit "invalid and unenforceable." Gov. Cuomo established the unit in 2012 to investigate landlord fraud, and the legislature has twice declined to provide funding for it.
A key city panel unanimously approved plans for the $1.5 billion redevelopment of the old Domino Sugar refinery on the Brooklyn waterfront. The City Planning Commission signed off on the proposal after the de Blasio administration pressured the developers, Two Trees Management, to include more low-income housing units in the 2,300-apartment project.
Public Advocate Letitia James recently filed a complaint against the owners of an Upper West Side apartment complex that has barred its rent-stabilized tenants from the building’s gym. The Commission on Human Rights complaint against the owners cite a 2008 law prohibiting discrimination based on income. It was established to protect tenants in the Section 8 voucher program, but James says it may apply in this case.
At a news conference on Feb. 4, Mayor de Blasio reiterated his intention to follow through on a promise he made during his campaign last year to not recommend any increase to New York City's property -tax rate when he releases his fiscal 2015 budget proposal.
The mayor and City Council have the power to make across-the-board increases to the nominal tax rate. They can also slice up the pie a bit differently, so that one type of pro...
Landlord CWCapital Asset Management, the loan servicing firm that represents the bondholders of Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village since the previous owner Tishman Speyer defaulted on its debt, recently agreed to grant tenants a one-month rent reduction because of damages suffered during Superstorm Sandy.
The October 2012 storm knocked out power in Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, and tenants waited more than three months for serv...
Records show that the number of tickets issued to owners for not removing sidewalk snow in front of their properties is on the rise as winter weather keeps hammering the city. During the first three weeks of the year, Department of Sanitation agents issued 2,036 tickets to lax landlords and homeowners for failing to shovel their sidewalks, according to the Sanitation Department.
This number of tickets so far is on pace to more than dou...
An East Village tenant who used an unorthodox “sushi defense” to keep her rent-stabilized studio apartment has recently lost her last court battle to keep her discounted pad. The owner had tried since 2007 to evict the tenant based on nonprimary residence. As evidence, the owner cited the fact that the electric bills for the apartment were negligible, but the tenant claimed that was because she ate a lot of take out and made a lot of sushi. This was dubbed &...
In 1885 New York State legislators enacted a law intended to safeguard construction workers who were finding themselves facing increasing dangers while working at ever-greater heights. The law, which became known as the Scaffold Law, requires employers on building sites to ensure the safety of laborers working above the ground.
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