Management Basics

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If you own or manage a rent-regulated building with garage spaces that are also covered under rent control or rent stabilization, you must be careful when you rent those garage spaces to tenants. You can’t increase the rents of those garage spaces by more than the allowable rent control increases or the applicable Rent Guidelines Board Order (RGBO) increases. And once you start providing a garage space, it becomes a required service that you can’t stop providing.

If you sign a vacancy lease with a tenant between Oct. 1, 2014, and Sept. 30, 2015, the new order issued on June 23 by the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB)—RGBO #46—lets you collect the vacancy increases permitted under the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997 (RRRA).

On June 23, 2014, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) issued an order—RGBO #46—setting the rent increases you may take for rent-stabilized tenants in New York City on leases beginning anytime on or after Oct. 1, 2014, through Sept. 30, 2015.

On June 11, Mayor de Blasio announced the start of a long-overdue security camera installation in six public housing developments around the city. Previously, de Blasio had blamed the city for the lack of security cameras in housing project buildings, calling the delay “unacceptable bureaucracy.” This prolonged issue received greater attention in the wake of the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old and critical injuring of a 7-year-old who were attacked while on their way to get ice cream at one of the public housing developments on June 1.

If you have a tenant who’s paying a monthly rent of $2,500 or more for a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment, it might be time to send out the second of two Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) forms that may eventually lead to deregulation of the apartment. If you miss the deadline, you will have to wait until next year to apply for deregulation.

You face a big problem if you know that a child under the age of 11 lives in an apartment but the tenant won’t let you in to install window guards. Section 131.15(a) of the city’s Health Code requires you to install window guards on each window of an apartment occupied by a child under the age of 11, except fire escape windows and first-floor windows that serve as fire exits.

Averting a possible strike, SEIU 32BJ, the union representing residential building service workers in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, recently reached a labor agreement with the Realty Advisory Board, an association that negotiates collective bargaining agreements on behalf of owners and operators of real property with unions that represent their maintenance and operating employees.

The DHCR recently issued Supplement No. 2 to Operational Bulletin 2005-1, which sets the monthly surcharges you can collect from rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants who buy and install their own portable or permanent washing machines, dryers, or dishwashers. The last time this Operational Bulletin was updated was in July 2009. The DHCR says the permissible monthly surcharges take effect immediately, and it will apply them in all currently pending cases in which the owner is seeking a surcharge for one of these tenant-installed appliances.

Rent-stabilized apartments must be registered annually. Annual registrations are accepted starting April 1 of the registration year and must be submitted no later than July 31 of the registration year. If an error is made on the annual rent registration or if any pertinent information changes, an owner or manager should file an amended rent registration for that apartment.

On Jan. 23, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) issued new fuel cost adjustment factors for rent-controlled apartments for the 2014 calendar year. The findings indicate that prices for #4 Oil, #6 Oil, Gas-Con Edison, Interruptible Gas-National Grid of New York, and electricity increased in price during the 2013 calendar year. Prices decreased for #2 Oil, Gas-National Grid of New York, Gas-National Grid, Interruptible Gas-Con Edison, and Steam during the calendar year of 2013.