What If An Owner Needs a Rent Stabilized Apartment?
Under the law, one of the few grounds for a landlord refusing to renew a Rent Stabilized tenant's lease is that the owner needs the subject apartment for his own or his immediate family's own personal use.
These personal use intentions by the owner must be made known to the tenant by a written notice (generally called a "Golub" notice) served between 150-90 days before the expiration of the tenant's current lease. Because the exact wording of this legal notice is crucial in achieving your goal, we recommend retaining an experienced landlord and tenant lawyer in order to properly draft this document.
In addition, the standard of proof for a landlord to achieve this goal has recently become more stringent and difficult as a result of last year's sweeping legislation. The landlord seeking to recover a rent stabilized apartment now must demonstrate an immediate and "compelling necessity" for such regulated unit; this is a vastly higher burden of proof than the previous requirement of just showing "good faith".
In addition, if the tenant or his/her spouse is a senior citizen, disabled or a long-term tenant in the apartment, such facts will most likely give the tenant a decisive defense to the owner's attempts to win back the apartment unit on such personal use basis.
Furthermore, if the building is owned under the name of a corporation, LLC, trust, partnership, or some legal entity other than in the landlord's own name, this fact will also most likely bar the bringing of such "personal use" eviction proceeding. Owners should consider this factor among the pros and cons if you are contemplating transferring the property out of your current personal ownership.
There are many other potential pitfalls and obstacles in successfully prosecuting a "personal use" eviction proceeding, including severe penalties if an owner fails to actually use the subject premises for the purposes expressed, once the apartment unit has been recovered.
We will be very glad to discuss all of these issues and the relative merit of your proposed case by you calling our office to schedule a consultation with one of our experienced attorneys.
Over the past four decades of representing property owners and renters, our office has constantly striven to offer personalized and friendly service to our clients and their acquaintances. We truly appreciate our clients' steadfast loyalty to our staff, our attorneys and ourselves, and promise that we will always be just a phone call or email away to answer any of your legal questions.
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We provide the subject matter expertise and expert testimony indispensable to successfully litigating complex cases, civil and criminal, involving a diverse range of issues relating directly or indirectly to real property or interests in real property.
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