Reena Gulati Blog

The Administrative Code of the City of New York § 7-210 imposes a nondelegable duty on the owners of commercial property to repair and maintain the sidewalk to their property. However, in certain cases, if there is an injury or death due to the sidewalk being in disrepair, a residential tenant at the property could be held liable to the owner and must indemnify the owner of the property for any damage resulting from that injury. It depends upon how the lease reads. Therefore, a “standard lease” must be carefully reviewed to determine if that liability is knowingly being assumed by the tenant. The tenant must understand whether he or she is responsible for maintaining the sidewalk because assuming it’s not the tenant’s responsibility may result in finding out the hard way that they are liable.

A party wall usually is on the dividing line between two adjacent properties and used for the common advantage of both property owners. In the most common scenario, part of the wall on each property is owned by the owner of each property respectively, with an easement granted to the other adjoining owner for support. The question is what rights, you as the owner of the property have to the party wall, and what you can do to it.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of U.S. Department of the Treasury, issued a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) that require the title companies to identify the individuals behind the LLC's or companies that purchase all cash real estate in Manhattan worth more than $3,000,000.00. This order currently applies to Manhattan and Miami Dade County, Florida. The purpose is to combat money laundering in the real estate sector in certain high end markets.

1. Don't wait. Often during the course of the tenancy, the tenant falls behind in rent or is a habitual offender and fails to pay rent in a timely manner. You as the landlord hope that it will come any day or the next week, as promised. If the tenant is behind in rental payments, the landlord should start a legal proceeding to evict immediately. In most circumstances waiting any longer is almost always detrimental to the landlord. This is because the law requires that adequate notice must be provided to the tenant prior to evicting them, which causes further delays in evicting the nonpaying tenant. The landlord continues to lose time and additional rent.

Often I get inquiries from potential clients who are in the process of employing a contractor to renovate their homes, asking if they should have a formal contract with the contractor. In a couple of instances the clients' projects were worth several hundred thousand dollars and they had no written contract with the contractor. However, the homeowners didn't feel comfortable turning over tens of thousands of dollars to the contractor at the very beginning of the project without an agreement and hence they called us.