It’s hard for landlords to wrap their heads around the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act.
TOPA, which bubbles up every year but has yet to come to a vote in the state legislature, would give tenants an exclusive window to attempt to purchase their landlord’s building before someone else does.
It surfaced again Thursday when Comptroller Brad Lander and Sen. Zellnor Myrie — both mayoral candidates — rallied with tenant activists at Irving Langer’s 63 Tiffany Place, a rental building in Brooklyn’s desirable Columbia Street Waterfront District.
Opponents of the legislation say it would delay and disrupt the normal sale process for the sake of an unlikely possibility — a purchase and successful ownership experience by tenants.
Besides, they say, tenants already have an opportunity to purchase their buildings. In the case of 63 Tiffany Place, they negotiated with Langer to sell to them or to a friendly nonprofit because they fear a major rent increase when the building’s rent subsidy agreement expires next year.
Housing Justice for All says Langer has now “walked away from the table.” If TOPA passed, Langer could still walk away from the table. It’s hard to see how the bill would change his mind.
Regardless, 63 Tiffany is an odd building for activists to target. In February they made it a cause célèbre for good cause eviction. Good cause is now the law citywide, but apparently it hasn’t done enough for 63 Tiffany, because politicians and activists are still protesting.
Also, 15 of the building’s 70 units are rent-stabilized. Tenants with permanently low rents and perpetual renewal rights have no reason to become owners or pay an equal share of the building’s mortgage and maintenance costs. They are already set for life.
I have no idea if Langer has been a good landlord at 63 Tiffany Place. But he’s being demonized despite participating in a government program that has kept rents there low for 30 years. It’s not his fault that the agreement is expiring. Nor is it his obligation to sell for below market value.
If landlords who participate in rent-subsidy programs get dragged through the mud when the subsidies run out, fewer will sign such agreements. That is not a good outcome for tenants.
In the activists’ press release, tenant John Leyva says, “We deserve the right to stay and age in place.” No doubt Langer believes he deserves the right to sell the building without government interference.
What we’re thinking about: A nonprofit founded by Silicon Valley executives during the pandemic says it uses temporary vacant land, emergency building codes and modular mass-produced building components to build interim supportive housing communities in as little as four months and for less than $50,000. A press release pitched it as a solution for New York City’s homeless. Does that sound feasible? Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: Cincinnati Insurance Company is sending non-renewal notices to Long Island homeowners, explaining that it no longer has the “appetite” for its risk concentration on the peninsula.
Elsewhere…
— The law that has allowed New York City to padlock more than 1,000 cannabis businesses — which was both a blessing and a curse for their landlords — is unconstitutional, a judge ruled Tuesday. The law allows the sheriff, whose own ethics have been called into question, to unilaterally shut down businesses for up to a year without a hearing. Some padlocked bodegas did not even sell cannabis. The Adams administration is appealing the decision, Gothamist reported.
— Inflation is a national and international phenomenon, but New York City has almost surely played a role in increasing local hotel room rates by cracking down on short-term rentals and all but stopping hotel development. Lower Manhattan’s 8,548 rooms across 44 hotels enjoyed an 89 percent occupancy rate from July through September and an average room rate of $303.62, a third-quarter record, the Downtown Alliance reported.
— Wavecrest Management, MDG Design & Construction and the New York City Housing Authority this week celebrated spending $492 million to renovate 1,600 apartments at the Williamsburg Houses. That’s $397,500 per unit.
Owners of rent-stabilized apartments, meanwhile, are limited to $15,000 per unit every 15 years by the rent stabilization law’s program for individual apartment improvements. City Limits reported that housing violations are concentrated and have risen significantly in the Bronx and southeast Brooklyn.
Closing time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Thursday was $22.3 million for Unit 8A at 155 West 11th Street. The 4,000-square-foot condo unit at the Greenwich Lane building was last sold as a new development in 2019 for $18.8 million, property records show.
Commercial: The largest commercial sale of the day was $5 million for 753 Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. The sale by Madison Realty Capital was of a five-story, 12-unit rental building. Madison’s CFO, Urian Yap, signed for the company.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $11.5 million for Unit 15CD at 35 West 15th Street in the Flatiron District. Ian Slater, Michael Koeneke and Eduardo Martinez of Compass have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was a proposed 72,625-square-foot, 12-story residential building with 95 units at 2055 Ryer Avenue in the Bronx. John Alleyne of Becall Engineering Services is the applicant. — Joseph Jungermann