The First Department Appellate Division ruled last month that an apartment that is rent stabilized before receiving J-51 tax benefits reverts to its previous stabilized status after those benefits expire and is subject to luxury deregulation. The Dec. 11 opinion, as reported by the NYLJ, follows an earlier First Department ruling, 73 Warren Street v. [...]
Federal regulators and 14 banks have reached a $10 billion settlement agreement to resolve claims of foreclosure misconduct. This settlement follows the state suit settlement with 5 banks for $26 billion that was reached in February 2012. It is not clear yet how the funds will be distributed and who will be the recipients. Considering [...]
It is about to become a lot harder to convince Unit Owners to serve on the boards of their building. Subsequent to a ruling handed down on July 3, 2012 in Fletcher v. The Dakota, boards can be held liable and sued personally for the building’s tortuous misdeeds. The discrimination lawsuit was initiated last year, by [...]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed a complaint alleging an illegal industry-wide practice of kickbacks in the title insurance business. Plaintiffs who sought to win damages under the anti-kickback provision of the federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The NYLJ reported on the Court's decision that the Complaint offered nothing more [...]
The process of applying to live in a city-financed affordable housing development is about to join the rest of the world and it's online/cloud/streaming glory. Starting Tuesday morning, applicants seeking to rent or buy an apartment in two new developments - the Westwind Houses in East Harlem and Richmond Place in Richmond Hill, Queens - [...]
No, really! Turns out the State of New York is selling its empty jails and prisons. Apparently the amount of inmates has been greatly reduced since its peak in the 90s. To cut costs and save money, the state has consolidated the housing of inmates and closed entire facilities. Some examples of properties for sale [...]
The Courts have proposed a rule that would enable them to force dormant foreclosure actions into settlement conferences. The rule is an attempt to thwart the lenders from merely filing a foreclosure action and then doing nothing with the case. The lenders are able to accomplish this file and wait tactic because additional documents, other [...]
New York Supreme Court Justice Singh has ordered a condo developer to return $16 million to individual purchasers of condominium units in the case styled CRP/Extell Parcel I, L.P. v. Cuomo. The law firm who drafted the developers offering plan mistakenly drafted the documents with a rescission date of Sept. 1, 2008 instead of Sept. [...]
The Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act (ILSFDA) was enacted in 1968 to prevent deceptive practices of the sale of unimproved tracts of land by requiring developers to disclose information needed by potential buyers. The original purpose of the act was to protect purchasers from unscrupulous sales of undeveloped home sites, frequently involving out-of-state sales [...]
Federal National Mortgage (FNM) began an eviction proceeding against a couple who occupied their apartment after FNM obtained the deed to the apartment through a foreclosure sale. The, now, tenants of the apartment argued that FNM could not maintain the eviction proceeding since FNM was not the proper assignee to the underlying mortgage for the [...]