A flood of owners of rent-regulated apartments have been moved to register them with the state by a law aiming right at their wallets.
The sharp increase before a July 31 deadline has exceeded the total from prior years by close to 200,000, The City reported.
The filing requirement is intended to stop landlords from removing apartments from rent regulation and renting them at market rates.
So far this year, close to 1 million apartments have been registered, with more expected as the Hochul administration sends out notices of lateness. In previous years, about 750,000 to 800,000 registrations came in by the July deadline.
The Division of Housing and Community Renewal warned landlords who missed the registration deadline that they face steep fines of $500 per month per apartment.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law last year to create stiffer penalties for failing to register with the state. Before that, the fine was just a one-time $10 surcharge that was rarely enforced, according to the outlet.
Now the agency is sending out about 11,000 late notices to building owners who failed to register their rent-regulated apartments.
A spokesperson for the landlord association Community Housing Improvement Program told the outlet that 99 percent of rent-stabilized property owners have complied with the new regulations.
The group noted that some notices were sent in error, citing delinquencies for units that don’t exist.
The new law came after a 2022 investigation by The City reported sharp declines in rent-stabilized apartment registrations. The story exposed landlords that were renting rent-regulated apartments at market rates without state approval.
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The state’s registration data is not readily available to the public. The outlet used data from tenant technology project JustFix, which pulls information from property tax bills posted online by the city.
Manhattan Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, an Upper West Side Democrat, told the outlet, “If this works, maybe it solves the problem.”
— Christina Previte