Despite word from apartment investors that the tough economy has forced a sharp rise in the number of tenants paying late or not at all over the past year, the volume of such cases being brought to landlord and tenant courts in the city rose just modestly in the first 10 months of the year, court records show.

The number of nonpayment cases filed in landlord and tenant courts in the five boroughs through October rose by 5.3 percent to 188,381 in 2009 from 178,752 in 2008, data from the Clerk of the Civil Court of New York City shows.

The steepest rise was 9.6 percent in Queens, while in only one borough, Staten Island, filings declined, by 11 percent. The increase in Manhattan was 5.6 percent to 43,321 cases.

The cases are filed in civil courts in the five boroughs for the first 10 terms of the year, with each term slightly shorter than a month.

Landlord and tenant attorney Todd Nahins, a partner at Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Nahins & Goidel, said the low numbers were unexpected.  More

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From left: Kevin Davis, partner at Area Property Partners; Mason Sleeper, principal with the real estate investment firm Praedium Group; Tim Wang, vice president at ING Clarion

The percent of residential apartment dwellers in the city who are not paying their rent has as much as quadrupled since the market weakened last year, industry leaders on a panel discussing multi-family properties said today.

“Collections, especially in New York City, have become more of an issue,” said Mark Stern, senior vice president at Waterton Residential, a Chicago-based building owner and operator. His firm is planning on making acquisitions in New York City.

“[They are] going from the 5 percent range to now 10 or 20 percent in collections, which makes a difference on the bottom line,” he said.

Mason Sleeper, a principal with the real estate investment firm Praedium Group, said he has seen a similar distress in the market.

“You have your collection issue which is increasingly creeping up to becoming a little bit of a problem,” he said.

They were speaking on a panel that also included Kevin Davis, partner of Area Property Partners; Tim Wang, vice president at ING Clarion and Max Herzog, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis. The panel, moderated by Mike Kelly, president of Caldera Asset Management, was part of a day-long forum covering multi-family real estate organized by GreenPearl. [more]