Every Jan. 15, the NYC Department of Finance (DOF) sends to each owner a tentative assessment for the next fiscal year (2016, in the current case) conveying the market value of the lot, including improvements, the actual assessed value of the lot, and, most important, the value upon which the...
Local Law 43 and other state legislation regulating heating oils (No. 4 and No. 6) in New York City were put in place to address the public health hazard presented by these fuels. The rules affecting types of oil used in boilers were passed in April 2011 as part of an update to Mayor Bloomberg...
The Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) recently announced an increase in this year’s air-conditioner rent surcharge for owners who pay for electricity. It set the monthly surcharge at $36.63, up from $27.89 last year. This year’s 31 percent increase reflects an 8.5...
If you own or manage a rent-regulated building with garage spaces that are also covered under rent control or rent stabilization, you must be careful when you rent those garage spaces to tenants. You can’t increase the rents of those garage spaces by more than the allowable rent control...
On June 11, Mayor de Blasio announced the start of a long-overdue security camera installation in six public housing developments around the city. Previously, de Blasio had blamed the city for the lack of security cameras in housing project buildings, calling the delay “unacceptable...
If you have a tenant who’s paying a monthly rent of $2,500 or more for a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment, it might be time to send out the second of two Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) forms that may eventually lead to deregulation of the apartment. If you...
You face a big problem if you know that a child under the age of 11 lives in an apartment but the tenant won’t let you in to install window guards. Section 131.15(a) of the city’s Health Code requires you to install window guards on each window of an apartment occupied by a child...
Averting a possible strike, SEIU 32BJ, the union representing residential building service workers in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, recently reached a labor agreement with the Realty Advisory Board, an association that negotiates collective bargaining agreements on behalf of...
The DHCR recently issued Supplement No. 2 to Operational Bulletin 2005-1, which sets the monthly surcharges you can collect from rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants who buy and install their own portable or permanent washing machines, dryers, or dishwashers. The last time this...
Rent-stabilized apartments must be registered annually. Annual registrations are accepted starting April 1 of the registration year and must be submitted no later than July 31 of the registration year. If an error is made on the annual rent registration or if any pertinent information changes,...
On Jan. 23, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) issued new fuel cost adjustment factors for rent-controlled apartments for the 2014 calendar year. The findings indicate that prices for #4 Oil, #6 Oil, Gas-Con Edison, Interruptible Gas-National Grid of New York, and electricity...
The city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) will be conducting special collections for mulching and recycling of Christmas trees beginning on Monday, Dec. 30, 2013, through Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2014. Trees are chipped, mixed with leaves, and recycled into compost for NYC’s parks,...
