Hello,
I've been living in my non-regulated Manhattan apartment for over 4 years now. I live with two other people, one of whom is a cosigner with me on the lease. The building has more than 6 apartments. When we received our renewal notice for this fourth year, our rent was increased by over 10% from $2,900 to $3,250.
Typical for a non-regulated apartment, you might say. A friend of mine who is a tenant advocate told me to look into the DHCR records for my apartment, and the information I saw in there prompted us to begin a Supreme Court case against our landlord.
The DHCR records showed that before we moved in, there was a Rent Stabilized tenant paying around $560 a month. This person lived in the apartment for two years before moving out. According to the record, the apartment was then registered as exempt due to High Rent Vacancy. Based on that record, it appeared that myself and my roommates were the next tenants to live in the apartment after it had been occupied by a rent stabilized tenant.
We signed on for $2,450 on July 1st, 2011. The very day the Rent Act of 2011 took effect. We did not receive any notices that the apartment was previously rent stabilized. We did the math and determined the landlord would have to had made over $75,000 in IAI renovations to bump the rent up from $560 to $2450. In addition, the threshold for deregulation was $2,500 on July 1st.
We filed our complaint with the Supreme Court May 1st, 2015. The landlord made two arguments to defend itself and have the case dismissed. (And also countersue us for $20,000)
1) The renovations for the apartment amounted to $82,000. We figured this would be the crux of their argument and we knew we had to prove there was a discrepancy.
2) There was ANOTHER tenant in between the rent stabilized tenant and us who signed the necessary lease to deregulate the apartment. This was pretty unbelievable to us when we heard it. How on earth were we going to prove there wasn't?
I and the other cosigner have been representing ourselves in court. I've been doing most of the "legwork" and in September I was able to get the judge to deny the landlord's motion to dismiss our case. Here's the evidence I was able to produce.
1) a. The renovations for the apartment actually amounted to $54,000 because the NYC Department of Buildings has records of the renovations, which are accessible online. Both the architect and the owner swore under penalty of perjury that the renovations only cost $54,000. According to those records, this included everything from demolition to construction to labor.
b. The cancelled checks made out to the contractor did not add up to their claimed amount. They only added up to about $71,000.
c. The apartment below our's was being renovated at the same time by the same contractor. When this point was brought up, the landlord failed to provide any more checks as evidence there were separate payments to this contractor for the other apartment.
2) There is no evidence the other tenant actually lived in the apartment. In fact, it was proven that no monies were exchanged between this alleged tenant and the landlord. We were able to find records of this "tenancy" at Housing Court. The tenant signed the lease in Feb. 2011 and a non-payment proceeding began in March 2011 and finally ended in June 2011. Whoever this person was, the landlord let them sign a lease without paying the first month's rent.
The $54,000 amount is crucial because using that amount for IAI improvements would have put the apartment under the pre-Rent Act of 2011 deregulation threshold of $2,000. So, even if that tenant were "real", they still would not have been able to deregulate the apartment.
Anyway, the judge ordered me to file a complaint with the DHCR within 30 days. I did just that. It came to about 230 pages with all the evidence included.
That was in late October. I've checked our case status and a rent examiner has still not been assigned. Our lease is up on June 31st, 2015. I have no idea what kind of renewal notice we will get this year, if at all.
I want to squat in the apartment until the DHCR makes a decision but I don't know if this is the best strategy.