New Lease Complying with New Tenant Laws
In the long history of New York landlord-tenant relations, the government has rarely cast such an extensive reversal of course in housing policy as it does in the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA). The HSTPA stops in its tracks the gradual conversion of units to free market and building permits. Landlords will now have access to Summary Proceedings only for base rent and evictions. Actions to recover fees and costs must be brought separately, likely resulting in protracted litigation in the trial courts. These are only a few of the many provisions of the HSTPA that will make it more difficult for Landlords to maintain the viability of their properties. Compliance with the law will be challenging.
Blumberg has once again turned to New York’s prominent real estate attorneys, Adam Leitman Bailey and Dov Treiman, to take on these challenges. Messrs. Bailey and Treiman have revised four of the Blumberg leases to conform with the HSTPA as well as with the other New York City and State laws. These revisions have necessarily focused on removing from the pre-HSTPA forms provisions that, prior to the HSTPA, benefited landlords. However, these new leases also prevent landlords from being hit with attorneys’ fees awards that they cannot themselves recover and from being the targets of improper consumer practice complaints where the lease asserts rights landlords no longer have. While updating the leases, Messrs. Bailey and Treiman have meticulously incorporated clearer provisions and have made the leases more precise and informative.
These are the most comprehensive leases available, covering almost every aspect of the landlord-tenant relationship. While written for the new millennium and the latest technological advances, they continue to include enforcement provisions that have won industry praise for preventing landlord-tenant battles,
Robert Blumberg explains. “Adam Leitman Bailey’s leases have signally clarified the landlord-tenant relationship. Every type of default has been covered, and when necessary, the process of eviction. is greatly facilitated. The detailed provisions about the proper installation of noise-muting carpeting, for instance, have made many a home more pleasant. The comprehensiveness of provisions that cover ‘pets’ and ‘noise’ have made homes safer, and together with the years of case law applied to the provisions, has likely saved many thousands in legal fees.”
The revised forms include the regulated apartment lease (form 56), the unregulated apartment lease (form 57), the condominium lease (form 102) and the cooperative sublease (form 86). Blumberg has also revised 26 additional forms to comply with the HSTPA including apartment, house and seasonal residential leases, summary proceedings forms and RSA forms. Paper forms can be obtained from office products dealers, from Blumberg directly, or can be completed and downloaded at http://www.blumberglegalforms.com. For a complete list of all the revised forms go to http://www.blumberg.com/blog. Blumberg dealers can be found at https://www.blumberg.com/dealers/.
Original Article