A day after Dec. 12’s Daily Dirt reached subscribers, landlord Ches Parnes called back to address its account of him unjustly holding tenants’ security deposits.
Parnes said he had returned two of them, and that one tenant had moved out on the third of the month — three days late — leaving him unable to rent out the unit until the following month. She won a judgment after he failed to show up in court. “It was stupid for me not to go,” he said. “I forgot.”
Parnes said he owns 13 buildings with 133 apartments, and when it comes to security deposits, “I am the same as other landlords.” He estimated that he keeps deposits from about 5 percent of tenants who move out because they leave holes in the walls, move out early or late, or don’t grant access to brokers trying to show the apartment.
When tenants stay too long or don’t provide enough notice of their departure, “I’m losing a full month of rent, or half a month,” Parnes said.
Landlords have little incentive to return deposits because tenants have to make a huge effort to go to court and win a judgment, and even when they do, collecting is difficult.
One reader suggested security deposits be held in escrow accounts to alleviate the problem of landlords’ keeping them without justification. That would reduce owners’ incentive to hold the money hostage because they would not have use of it.
This would not be a perfect solution — nothing ever is — because escrow accounts involve attorneys and administrative costs that someone would have to pay. Also, disputes over money in escrow do come up. On rare occasions, a lawyer can steal escrow money.
But at least it would even out the balance of power. In the current system, to get their security deposits back, tenants largely depend on landlords’ good will.
Parnes agreed that the court system has failed both landlords and tenants. “It doesn’t work for either side,” he said.
He said he’s been in court for four years with one of his Bronx tenants. A judge just threw out the nonpayment case, so now Parnes must start from scratch by filing a holdover case. He will never be able to collect the back rent, which now exceeds $100,000, he said.
What we’re thinking about: How do typographical errors end up in ACRIS, the city’s property records database? Last week it reported a $300 million loan in Brooklyn at 5829 Kings Highway, a small house purchased by Nissan Sofi of Great Neck. Further review revealed it to be a $300,000 loan. Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: The first person to discover criminality by Winston Nguyen, the teacher fired by elite Brooklyn school St. Ann’s for soliciting graphic sexual images from students, was real estate agent Veronique Perrin of R New York. She busted the deviously enigmatic Columbia grad for stealing more than $300,000 from an elderly couple. He served four months in jail, but the school hired him anyway.
Elsewhere…
Does Citi Bike expansion provide fair access — or fuel gentrification?
The mayor last week announced that service will be extended next fall in the Bronx (to Norwood and Riverdale), Brooklyn (to Brownsville, East New York, Kensington and Bay Ridge) and Queens (to west of Flushing Meadows Corona Park).
The city said this will provide “equitable access” to the service. But previous extensions of Citi Bike have been jeered by some New Yorkers as an accelerator of gentrification. The arrival of coffee shops, bike lanes and doggie day care in communities of color continues to trigger fears of displacement.
A brave few try to calm those fears. South Bronx advocate Majora Carter notes that Black people also ride bikes, have dogs and drink coffee. “We like nice things too,” she likes to say, having learned that any iteration of the G word — gentrification — is “too triggering.”
The U.S. city with the highest share of residents living in rental housing is Newark, at 75 percent, followed by Jersey City (72 percent), Miami and New York (67 percent each). Los Angeles is fifth at 65 percent.
Rounding out the top 10 are Boston, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Orlando and Washington, all above 60 percent. Highland Cabinetry put together the figures using U.S. Census data.
Among those cities, New York had the lowest percentage of residents move in the past year — fewer than 1 in 10. Its housing market is sclerotic in part because of rent stabilization, which incentivizes tenants to stay in their homes and makes it hard to leave. The city’s vacancy rate was last measured at 1.4 percent, a 56-year low.
In Florida, where rent control is largely banned, the mobility rate is 18 percent in Miami and 20 percent in Orlando.
Closing time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Tuesday was $16.5 million for a 2,761-square-foot condominium unit at 15 Central Park West in Lincoln Square.
Commercial: The largest commercial sale of the day was $237 million for office and retail properties at 180 and 202 Broome Street on the Lower East Side. The four transactions were for a combined 277,000 square feet.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $4.2 million for a co-op unit at 320 Central Park West. Stephen Wald has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was for a 27,490-square-foot, seven-story, 22-unit project at 822 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. Ruslan Goychayev of RSLN Architecture filed the permit on behalf of Balanced Living Development.
— Matthew Elo