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Which New York City Apartment Building Owner Faces an Attorney General Investigation For Tenant Harassment?
January 28, 2010 by Neil · 2 Comments
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will start a lawsuit against Neil Rubler’s Vantage Properties for systemic harassment of its tenants. Since 2006, Vantage has acquired more than 125 buildings with more than 9,500 units—the majority of which are rent-regulated—in Harlem, northern Manhattan and parts of Queens.
Nicholas Haros, dubbed one of the city’s 10 worst landlords in 2005 by the Housing Here and Now advocacy group, sold his portfolio of 47 residential buildings in Queens for approximately $300 million to to Apollo Real Estate Advisors and Vantage Properties LLC. That penciled out to about $160,000 per unit.
Apparently, “Haros” is Greek for “the height of the market.”
For those of you wondering exactly how Vantage was allegedly harassing his tenants, Vantage allegedly was trying to generate substantial tenant turnover by serving Golub notices and commencing eviction proceedings again rent-regulated tenants. That business plan, aka the Golub program, involved removing tenants, converting the units to market-rate apartments and charging substantially higher rents.
Will this portfolio meet the same fate of Stuyvesant Town / Peter Cooper Village, writ small?
Hat Tip: Crains
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2 Responses to “Which New York City Apartment Building Owner Faces an Attorney General Investigation For Tenant Harassment?”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] Multifamily Investor blogged about the AG’s lawsuit against Vantage last month. The “agreement with Vantage not only preserves the rent-regulated apartments owned by them, but also sends a strong message that my office will continue to protect tenants and bring unscrupulous landlords to justice,” Cuomo said in a statement. [...]
[...] “the little guy.” Moreover, as NY’s Attorney General, he recently brought a lawsuit against Vantage Properties for pushing out tenants illegally. More instructive, however, is the resolution of this lawsuit: settled for $1 [...]