Hello. I’ve been renting a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn for about 14 years, but am now in China for the next year. I didn’t want to lose my apartment, so I arranged an informal sublet with the brother of a friend. I didn’t bother to tell my landlord because my apartment is well below market-rate and I was concerned that they’d probably look for a way to get me out if they knew. Nor did I check my lease for any sub-clause concerning this, as I felt it would be beside the point (for the above reason). The super is already coming around asking questions. No sublease was signed; what recourse do I have? Among other things, if I do make an official request to my landlord (clearly after the fact), could I say that I at first thought my trip would be temporary and that they were initially apartment-sitting, but that now work will require me to be away for a longer time and that my apartment-sitters will now be subletting from me instead? Or are there any other loopholes I can use here? Thanks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello. I’ve been renting a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn for about 14 years, but am now in China for the next year. I didn’t want to lose my apartment, so I arranged an informal sublet with the brother of a friend. I didn’t bother to tell my landlord because my apartment is well below market-rate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37350,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"schneps_byline":"","schneps_post_style":"","schneps_post_source":"","schneps_syndicated_read_more":"","schneps_post_source_sitename":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_html":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_src":"","schneps_post_source_shortname":"","schneps_post_source_url":"","schneps_post_source_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[429],"tags":[],"districts":[],"class_list":["post-35879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2009\/09\/questions-about-1\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Questions About Subletting","url":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2009\/09\/questions-about-1\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2009\/09\/questions-about-1\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":""},"articleSection":"Legal","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"teachinginchina"}],"creator":["teachinginchina"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Forum Archive","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"2009-09-09T09:45:00Z","datePublished":"2009-09-09T09:45:00Z","dateModified":"2009-09-13T10:54:47Z"},"rendered":"