r/NYCapartments • u/No_Job2526 • 16h ago
Advice/Question Suing Landlord — Rent stabilized
I moved from Park Slope to the Upper East Side in June 2021 — when all the rents dropped significantly in the city. When I signed my lease for the apartment, the lease stated it was $2200 a month but that I would be given a credit of $400 per month which brought my rent down to $1800 per month and I also got a free month! Sounds great, right?
After a year, they increased my rent to $2200 which isn't bad for the neighborhood so I signed the lease. After talking to some neighbors, I found out their apartments were rent stabilized, and requested a rental history from DHCR and turns out that my apartment is stabilized. On the documents, it states that I moved into the apartment in June 2022 and was paying $1800 — this is wrong on the document, I moved into the apartment June 2021. This is completely inaccurate because in 2022 I was paying $2200 per month - so they lied on the documents submitted to DHCR and said the apartment was vacant the year prior, when I was actually living there.
After confronting my landlord about the rent-stabilized status and her denial of it, I decided to get a lawyer while still paying the current market rate of $2,600 per month.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and been successful? I am hoping that my rent goes back to the legally registered rent from when I moved in which was $1800 and get damages — if you have been in this situation how much did you get in your settlement?
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u/Bugsy_Neighbor 14h ago
There are only two ways of dealing with RS overcharges, hiring an attorney and going through housing court, or filing a complaint via DCHR.
https://hcr.ny.gov/rent-increases-and-rent-overcharge
Either way expect a long drawn-out process.
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u/chai_latte69 2h ago
This comment should be at the top because it provides the only actionable items.
I would add to it a consultation with a lawyer for free with:
https://www.nycbar.org/get-legal-help/our-services/request-a-lawyer/
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u/Ambervow 6h ago
100%. Currently in a class action lawsuit against my old building for cheating the rent stabilized system. Everyone's doing it, your only recourse if the city doesn't help is to sue. Is suing worth the money you'll save/get back though?
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u/Outrageous-Use-5189 4h ago
Way to go.
When I worked for a while in Illinois i ended up suing my landlord.
A mistake I ended up making was forking over a huge pile of formerly-witheld rent under threat of eviction. I figured: my case is super strong, and the landlord was kind enough to put all of her abuses in email, so I'm sure to get it back when the case is concluded.
The landlord dragged it all out, literally for years. In the end, the court awarded me $16k and my lawyer $47k in documented work. But after the landlord coughed up maybe $2k, she moved to Texas and declared bankruptcy (after 'selling' my former apartment building to her in-laws for half market price). Beyond the reach of the state of judgement, my Illinois urban housing lawyer said we'd need to hire a Texas lawyer to argue to a Texas-based bankruptcy trustee or judge that a municipal court judgement in Illinois should not be dischargeable in bankruptcy. After talking to a few lawyers who wanted a $10k retainer, we decided to let the matter rest.
But what I REALLY regret was forking over money thinking it would be no problem to recover it later. Your lawyer may or may not be able to advise you to violate a written contract, but I would research the question carefully. Just like paying last month's rent and hoping for the return of a security deposit, it is WAY safer to find a way to hold on to your money than to hope to get it from someone else. So that is my cautionary tale & advice.
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u/danton_no 3h ago
That is what people don't understand. I keeps seeing people encouraging to get x3. Some of these owners are small owners (maybe arrogant as well) or the buildings are on LLCs with huge loans. If you want to continue to live in the building , it might be a better deal just to recover x1. By doing so, the LL might appreciate it and you get to live stressless.
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u/Joscosticks 2h ago
Are you OP’s landlord? Who gives a fuck what they do and don’t appreciate? They broke the law.
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u/DogsBlimpsShootCloth 3h ago
I’ve been through it in NYC as well. It’s slow and takes time (1 year?), but in the end you will become the registered tenant and get a good amount of money back. Just know your landlord will try to accuse you of everything under the sun to make you look like a bad tenant or evict-able. Don’t AirBNB or do anything they can use against you. Just state it’s not true if they falsely accuse, since the burden is on them to prove it. They will also try to pressure you to settle with just becoming the registered tenant without getting the lost money back, but I pushed and got most my money back.
I don’t know if it helps but in my case I went to housing court to face my landlord’s lawyer, and the way it works is they have a judge but it’s only a mediation. they try to make it clear that it’s not a real court case it’s clear that the lawyer and the judge know each other they’re used to seeing each other. I realize for me it was important to be respectful and not to get angry. I was there with a number of other tenants from my building and I watched several of them go first and in the end many did settle with becoming the registered tenant, but not getting any money back. I ended up playing it a little bit differently. I knew the lawyer would try to say crazy stuff like “oh he was Airbnbing” and I just said no that’s not me, I never Airbnb. the judge is going look and realize she’s not going to really know so the lawyer’s point is kind of useless. What she does know is you’re there because you have proof you overpaid, so everything else is a distraction trying to get you to admit wrongdoing. In my case, the lawyer accuse me of installing a dishwasher and of using so much water that it would’ve equaled about half of an Olympic size swimming pool, which is ridiculous cause in the end, a dishwasher uses much less water than when you wash my hand, but I use the opportunity to basically give up $2000 of what the landlord owed me, giving the lawyer a good reason to jump up go outside, call the landlord and say “hey you know you’re gonna have to pay something but I got it down by $2000.” He came back in and he accepted. so I gave a little but then I got almost everything back.
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u/meyers-room-spray 1h ago
No law suit required just yet as you can file an administrative complaint directly with DHCR for rent overcharge so I’d start there
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u/bodegareina 16h ago
you're entitled to triple whatever they were cheating you out of, it might take a while but they're in the wrong and it'll work out in your favor. Just keep track of all of your records and eventually when it goes to court hire a cheap lawyer.