Thursday Links
Brownstones, Park Slope. Photo by guanubian. Bistricer Trying to Cut New Starrett Deal [NY Times] Spitzer Aiming to Raise De-Stabilization Threshold [NY Post] Developers Rushing To Beat the Tax Man [NY Sun] 280 Washington Avenue: Fame Slept Here [NY Magazine] One Year After the Greenpoint Warehouse Fire [Gothamist] The Greening of Lincoln Road [Across the…
Brownstones, Park Slope. Photo by guanubian.
Bistricer Trying to Cut New Starrett Deal [NY Times]
Spitzer Aiming to Raise De-Stabilization Threshold [NY Post]
Developers Rushing To Beat the Tax Man [NY Sun]
280 Washington Avenue: Fame Slept Here [NY Magazine]
One Year After the Greenpoint Warehouse Fire [Gothamist]
The Greening of Lincoln Road [Across the Park]
The History and Intention of the ESDC [AY Report]
Investing in a Co-op with Rent-Stabilized Tenant? [Forum]
Being a landlord is problematic, don’t take out your problems on the whole system. You should have done your research better, sell the building if you can.
Find a profession, or vocation, that
better suits your personality.
Market rents for all!
My friend down the street from me lives in a rent stabilized apartment on the bottom floor of a brownstone. Her building was sold and the new owners were apparently under the impression that they could just get rid of her and the tenant on the top floor, a disabled man with a terminal illness. When they found out it wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought, they pitched a fit. They left on vacation in the dead of winter and turned the heat off. My friend had to call the firemen to break down the door so they could get to the thermostat and turn the heat back on so she and the sick man didn’t freeze to death.
Now, I know that it must suck to have a family and buy a really expensive brownstone that you thought you would have all to yourself and then find out the real estate broker or whoever lied to you. It must suck that they can’t use their own backyard, because the only access to it is from my friend’s apartment. It must suck to *only* have two floors to house your family in. But their “right” to those two apartments is not inviolable. Even if the man on the top floor wasn’t rent stabilized, I would say it’s immoral for them to kick him out without making sure he has somewhere decent to go. Being able to use all four floors of a building (or rent out apartments for full market rate) is not your God-given right. Being a decent human being should always take precedence.
Arkus–just to correct your mis-reading of my history, I was renting a rent-controlled apartment which was being sublet by a phantom prime tenant who later went to jail for doing this. I was definitely not paying rent-controlled rent, a fact I only discovered when the building’s management slipped a real rent notice under my door. Management wouldn’t sign a lease with me–even at the much higher rent I was paying–cause the phantom prime tenant rented many of their apartments so they never had to deal with individual tenants. That’s why he went to jail. When I couldn’t get a lease in my name, I moved.
I am not for anyone who abuses the system, landlord or tenant. Your opinion about your rent-controlled tenant, however, is just that: an opinion.
6:27pm,
I’m not sure what’s “representative of the vast majority of rent-regulated tenants.” All I know is what I’ve experienced myself as a landlord in lower Manhattan over the last 10 years.
Your landlord in 1976 was lucky as hell not to agree to rent you that rent controlled apartment. You’d still be living there and probably be paying a couple hundred bucks a month rent. Instead you own your own place that’s probably worth half a million dollars or more. Both you and your old landlord are better off.
Countless New Yorkers would be better off if the rent laws never existed because they would own valuable properties like you do, but instead they stayed in rental apartments their entire lives because they were dirt cheap.
I have an older tenant with a rent controled apartment paying less than $200/mo. who has to have the Dept. of Social Services pay his rent because he figured he never had to make any money since his rent was so cheap. In my opinion, his rent controlled apartment ruined his life.
The rent laws are bad for society at large, both landlords and tenants equally.
Dear Anon 6:27
Thanks for the background, very interesting.
My experiences are what I know, I let others speak of theirs. There must be a way to improve the system so as to protect the vulnerable but to discourage abuse. I must admit that my experience with cynical (and often very well-off) renters in Brooklyn Heights forms my outlook because that is what i know first hand.
fred: here’s my background. moved into illegally sublet rent-controlled apartment in 1976. when manager of building refused to terminate rent-controlled lease and sign one with me, i moved out. (btw, the tenant of record on that apartment was a notorious abuser of the system who went to jail in 1981.) in 1978 i moved into illegal loft space in tribeca, got involved with loft tenant movement and counseled tenants at a weekly housing clinic for seven years, and i never advocated breaking the law. after years of fighting with our landlord, the tenants bought the building and turned it into a co-op. (btw, lest you feel sorry for the landlord, he made out handsomely in this transaction.)
also, in case you didn’t notice, the case i directed you to was just last year, so perhaps this hardened real estate type might try again.
sorry if you think i’m arrogant, but i get really tired of listening to people bring up individual situations which are not representative of the vast majority of rent-regulated tenants. I can counter your description of one tenant with 10-20 of people who earn less than average income and benefit only from the legal advantages of rent stabilization.
well I don’t think I am wrong, what i’m telling you is what has transpired in my building. I do not own that occupioed aparmtent but I do know that the owner of it, who I would characterize as an old-time, hardened real estate investor, took the lady to court and lost. She had not converted her apartment into a “dorm” she just rented out her second bedroom. It was and is a concern to the coop because new renters come and go and we have no idea who they are.
You strike me as a bit arrogant. I would like to hear about your experiences in real life, not just your search engine results.
Fred–you’re wrong. Check this out (and hire new lawyers):
http://www.nyrealestatelawblog.com/profiteering/index.html
arkus–collection of legal fees by the winning party is governed by the lease, you know, not housing court. just sayin.’