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Is this Fraud?

NYC Rent Regulation: Rent Control/Rent Stabilized, DHCR Practice/Procedures

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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby Aubergine » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:49 pm

A landlord does not need a legitimate explanation of its failure to register in order to avoid a penalty. The RSC was specifically amended to effectively eliminate any penalty for failing to register or for collecting otherwise lawful rent increases while failing to register.
9 NYCRR § 2528.4 Penalty for failure to register

(a) The failure to properly and timely comply, on or after the base date, with the rent registration requirements of this Part shall, until such time as such registration is completed, bar an owner from applying for or collecting any rent in excess of: the base date rent, plus any lawful adjustments allowable prior to the failure to register. The late filing of a registration shall result in the elimination, prospectively, of such penalty, and for proceedings commenced on or after July 1, 1991, provided that increases in the legal regulated rent were lawful except for the failure to file a timely registration, an owner, upon the service and filing of a late registration, shall not be found to have collected a rent in excess of the legal regulated rent at any time prior to the filing of the late registration. Nothing herein shall be construed to permit the examination of a rental history for the period prior to four years before the commencement of a proceeding pursuant to sections 2522.3 and 2526.1 of this Title.
(Emphasis added.)
Aubergine
 

Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby In aNYminute » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:33 pm

Thanks Aubergine. How encouraging for landlords to charge what they want, not register for 4 years and run out the SOL.
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby Aubergine » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:09 pm

Quite so. Statutes of limitations are in many cases simply blunt instruments used by more powerful classes of defendants to prevent less powerful plaintiffs from recovering. In this instance, the law also includes an evidentiary rule that allows an illegal rent charged four years ago to become the basis of the legal rent today. This is just one component of a lot of terrible landlord-drafted legislation that needs to be repealed if tenants are to have even a hope of slowing the tide of deregulation.
Aubergine
 

Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby In aNYminute » Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:09 pm

"The late filing of a registration shall result in the elimination, prospectively, of such penalty, and for proceedings commenced on or after July 1, 1991, provided that increases in the legal regulated rent were lawful except for the failure to file a timely registration"

The increases were not lawful. The rent was tripled with no MCI or IAI, LL would have to have had DHCR approval in any case to claim that kind of increase.

So why I should'nt persue this in court to:

a) Ask for overcharges. Is there a strict rule on collecting any overcharge monies at all after four years; even if there was fraud?

b) Ask for rent reduction based on what the proper rent should have been with lawful increases or ask to use the Thorton formula were no lawful rent was available on the base date.

I've paid at least $70,000 more in rent then LL was entitled to charge over the years. Surely there is some justice to be had in the world
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby NYHawk » Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:15 pm

Another quirk in this ridiculous system is that a landlord does not need DHCR's approval for any IAI's only for a building wide MCI.
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby Anna » Wed Jun 21, 2006 10:22 am

In aNYminute wrote:The DHCR confirms the triple rent jump is very questionable. There were no MCI or IAI until years after. Then of course they played the SOL card. The whole building in nearly destabilized!!!


In an earlier reply, you said the apt was decontrolled.

Was your apt RS or deregulated when you moved in?
What is it now?

Please remember: if LL used false DHCR registrations to deregulate or speed-up deregulation, the 4-yr SOL does not apply to the dereg. The SOL applies to pure-ROs or pure-FMRAs.
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby In aNYminute » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:23 am

Anna wrote:In an earlier reply, you said the apt was decontrolled.

Was your apt RS or deregulated when you moved in?
What is it now?


Hi Anna,

The apartment was and is still RS, but just under the $2000 mark with the false LRR, which is why I want to challenge the false registrations now.
Most of the other apartment is the building have been deregulated in the past few years.
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Wai Chan vs Gao Xiao Ying & Gregory Stuart

Postby Greg » Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:51 am

I was the pro se respondent in this case. I am now represented by Jason S Deutschmeister. This discussion refers to the winning tenants in this case.

A couple of points:
1. The mater will be determined in HC on 08/17/06 via trial. I have not won yet.
2. A 20% vacancy allowance is permissible for the first rent stabalized tenant.
3. The last registrations for the entired building, (some 23 apartments) was in 1986, apart from filing of my apartment registration 6 months prior to the end date of a two year lease, and after serving an eviction proceeding, The rent increase was 2,312%
4. Watch for the decision of the court on thia matter regarding the 4 year rule.
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby Magrodny » Sat Dec 30, 2017 11:02 am

@ greg so how was this case ultimately resolved?
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Re: Is this Fraud?

Postby TenantNet » Sat Dec 30, 2017 11:40 am

Greg isn't going to see this. His post was from 2006, almost 12 years ago. The note about your post was sent to his email, but it bounced back.
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