Tenants of Pinnacle Group buildings, largely in Northern Manhattan, want a judge to throw out a settlement their lawyers reached with the landlord for rent overcharges, the New York Daily News reported.

Five years ago tenants sued Pinnacle, one of the city’s biggest rent-stabilized apartment owners, for illegal rent charges and harassing tenants in an effort to drive them out and increase rents. Lawyers found rent-stabilized tenants, whose rents are registered with the state, had been, in some cases, charged as much as $800 per month more than the state registry indicates.

As per the terms of the agreement reached by Pinnacle and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Pinnacle has hired a court administrator to settle the claims and award damages to the tenants. [more]

The Pinnacle Group has reached a $2.5 million settlement with
rent-regulated tenants who had claimed in a lawsuit that they were subject to harassment, unlawful rent increases and
aggressive eviction attempts during the real estate boom, the New York
Times reported. Under the settlement, Pinnacle Group, as the landlord,
will pay $2.5 million to legal and tenant-rights groups to help
current and former tenants make legal claims for damages. The Pinnacle
Group, which owns about 15,000 apartment units citywide, must now set up a
help line and in the future must carefully notify tenants of plans to
increase rents or start evictions. [more]

A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]

[more]

A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]

[more]

A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]

[more]

From left: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Neil Rubler, president and CEO of Vantage Properties

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that he would
sue Vantage Properties, one of the largest landlords of rent-regulated
housing in New York City, for allegedly harassing tenants. Cuomo said in a statement that he would sue to halt the alleged
harassment and seek monetary damages to tenants who were victimized. “[Vantage's] underhanded tactics displace long-time residents from
their homes and exacerbate the acute affordable housing shortage,”
Cuomo said in a statement. This is not the first time the office of the New York attorney general
has put pressure on a large city landlord. In December 2006, the office
of then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer hammered out an agreement with
Pinnacle Group, a landlord that was strongly criticized for evictions
and rent charges. The allegations against Vantage, headed by Neil Rubler, include trying
to evict tenants with claims that the apartment is not their primary
residence, and suing tenants in housing court for non-payment despite
receiving rent payments in cash. [more]