On June 14, 2019, New York State enacted The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019.
This Act was written to affect ALL residential landlord-tenant leases.
Clearly, when Governor Andrew Cuomo signed this legislation it was intended to protect tenants’ rights, primarily in rent controlled apartments and condominium conversions. In all, 145 pages directly impacting the real estate industry amending the existing Real Estate Property Law, the Real Property Actions and Proceeding Law including General Obligation Law and NYS eviction procedures, was there any consideration for short term and or seasonal rentals — obviously not.
Further, effective immediately, landlords are not permitted to more than one month’s rent upon signing.
Having been a broker on the East End for more than three decades, I have watched the evolution which has brought us to the existing summer rental lease procedures currently. The landlord is protected and secure with their summer tenant’s commitment by receiving the summer value upfront, including security and utility deposits. This is widely practiced on the East End due to past issues that dictated such payment procedures.
Many years ago, leases were written in a pay-as-you-lease fashion which led to some unscrupulous tenants leaving without final payments. Landlords had to chase them down or hire an attorney to collect the balance of the rent. The utility deposit was born from some low-quality tenants finding some lame reason to not pay the landlords’ service providers. The result was the landlord having to come out of pocket to pay their service people such as pool, lawn, cleaning, gardens as well as utilities. After many years of getting the short end of the stick, it was our landlords that insisted on being protected and rightfully so.
East End tenants are leasing some of New York’s most expensive real estate and it is a different leasing situation than rent controlled apartments and condo conversions.
There are other parts of this Act that create issues for the landlord including but not limited to the rules surrounding security deposits, late payments, eviction proceedings, etc.
It’s wonderful that Governor Cuomo went to such lengths to protect tenants, but please, not at the expense of landlords.
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Our attorney Heather Wright summarized the Act – CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.
Click here to view the full THE HOUSING STABILITY AND TENANT PROTECTION ACT OF 2019.