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There has been renewed interest to cap or limit broker fees paid by prospective tenants after some high-profile instances of brokers asking for thousands of dollars in fees in exchange for highly coveted apartments have made the news. In one case, a renter paid a broker fee of $19,500 for a rent-stabilized apartment that rents for $1,725 month on the Upper West Side. New York’s Department of State (DOS), the agency responsible for licensing real estate agents, is ...

Shortly before the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida, which resulted in 11 people drowned in basement apartments during the storm, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a report called “Bringing Basement Apartments into the Light.” The report proposes a path to legalize basement apartments.

On July 21, the State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) announced that it is “actively reviewing and processing eligible Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) applications submitted through June 30, 2022.” This announcement came about because the 2022–23 state budget includes additional funds to support the ERAP program.

HUD recently announced that an Administrative Law Judge found that a Long Island landlord violated the Fair Housing Act when he refused to rent to a mother and her daughter because of the daughter’s cerebral palsy. The judge ordered the owner to pay $50,530 in damages to the family and a $20,111 civil penalty to the United States. The judge said the landlord’s behavior “merits imposition of a maximum civil penalty.”

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is responsible for proposing water rates, while the Water Board is responsible for establishing the rate following the proposal and subsequent public hearings. DEP delivers over a billion gallons of drinking water, treats 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater, and maintains more than 7,400 miles of sewer pipes each day.

In a preliminary vote on May 5, the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) recommended increasing rents for rent-stabilized apartment buildings. The RGB is made up of nine mayoral appointees, two of whom represent tenants, two who represent landlords, and another five members who are supposed to act on behalf of the general public. During the preliminary vote, five members of the board voted in favor of the proposed hikes. The board's preliminary vote called for the following ...

The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) recently released selected initial findings from the 2021 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) after state lawmakers voted twice to delay the report by more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to accommodate U.S. Census outreach.

HPD's Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP) is a program for apartment buildings that have many Housing Maintenance Code violations. The goal of the program is to improve housing conditions by performing frequent inspections to monitor correction of violations, and issue Orders to Correct if the owner fails to act. The program also allows HPD to make repairs and replace building systems if necessary.

Mayor Eric Adams and New York Attorney General Letitia James recently announced a settlement against the owners of a building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for illegally evicting tenants in 2020 and running an unlawful short-term rental operation for four years across nine Brooklyn buildings. The $2.25 million settlement is the largest monetary award the city has ever received from a case against an illegal short-term rental operator, and the case represents the city&rsqu...

On Feb. 8, the City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises held a joint hearing with the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection on the proposed permanent open restaurant program. The meeting lasted over eight hours with 250 people testifying for and against the program.