In 2022, the New York State Legislature enacted the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act (FAPA), thereby amending several interrelated provisions of the Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR), the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law (RPAPL), and the General Obligations Law (GOL), which affect how and when the statute of limitations may be invoked by defaulting Full Article…
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Recently Passed Real Estate Nightmare Legislation
A review of some of the most noteworthy landlord-tenant related legislation of 2023 and early 2024 involving criminal background checks, stopping short-term tenancies, flood histories and rent regulation. While readers with differing interests will disagree about the cost/benefit effects of recent enactments (both legislative and regulatory) regarding the landlord-tenant relationship, all can agree that these Full Article…
Who Bears Responsibility for Required Condo/Co-Op Apartment Repairs?
In cases where building management and the unit owner disagree on who bears responsibility for making the repairs and/or who bears the repair costs, the attorney’s role, whether in representing the cooperative or condominium board on the one side or the opposing apartment shareholder or condominium residential or commercial unit owner on the other, is Full Article…
Understanding the Anti-Harassment Housing Laws in NYC
For the first time since the passage of the first anti-harassment housing law, a comprehensive review of those laws and their applicability, purpose, penalties, and dates of effectiveness have been explained and analyzed in detail. The authors have sought to educate practitioners and their clients on this vastly misunderstood body of law. One of the Full Article…
Awarding Attorney Fees in Access to Property Proceedings
The right to access another’s property codified in RPAPL §881, once described, as recently as 2002, as a “little-used law” (as quoted in Rosma Development, LLC v. South, 5 Misc.3d 1014(A), 798 NYS2d 713 (Sup. Ct., King. Co., 2004) (Schmidt, J.), is now used for lawsuits that arise on a frequent basis, amidst the constantly evolving Full Article…
What Happens When a Party Wall Spoils the Party?
Many reasons occasioned by the Housing Stability and Tenant Prevention Act disincentivized property owners from improving existing buildings because either (a) they could not greatly increase rents after a rent-regulated tenant vacated a unit, or (b) they could not obtain approved rent increases by improving the major components of a building. The only way to Full Article…
A Lender’s Guide To Hiking Through the Retroactive Trails of the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act
Lenders in New York are battling backwards to foreclose on loans that are indisputably due and owing. On Dec. 30, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the controversial Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act (FAPA) in direct response to the New York State Court of Appeals’ decision in Freedom Mtge. Corp. v. Engel, 37 N.Y.3d 1 (2021), Full Article…
Rules on Partitioning Ownership Property Rights
Whether a property owned by two or more tenants-in-common can be partitioned “in kind,” i.e., by physically dividing the real estate or other property interest, or by subjecting it to a judicial sale, or even whether the property may be subject to partition at all, are issues that courts must decide when the property’s majority and Full Article…
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