Even the de Blasio administration had qualms about proposed commercial rent control legislation at a hearing Monday, but Council Speaker Corey Johnson implied the bill could pass after amendments to exclude larger tenants.

The IRS issued proposed rules for new Opportunity Zones that will allow investors to defer and perhaps avoid all capital gains taxes on qualifying real estate developments. The NAHB also released a quick FAQ on the Zone rules.

The latest New York City Construction Outlook from the Building Congress forecasts non-residential construction will peak this year at a record $39 billion, falling slowly in 2019 and 2020, while residential construction will continue at about 20,000 units per year.

The Daily News editorialized against high property taxes on apartments this week, noting that rental units make up 9% of the City’s property wealth, yet are stuck paying 16% of the property taxes.

Texting is becoming the preferred way to communicate with younger tenants, but owners need to know that the technology comes with regulatory requirements. The latest NAA Units Magazine explains that texting falls under the FCC’s telephone regulations and requires some record of tenant consent, including written consent for marketing texts.

The Regional Plan Association, Wednesday, issued a report saying roughly 2 % of buildings had “bad landlords.” A “bad landlord” was defined as one having both more than ten violations on a building and having brought evictions actions against 30% of tenants within about 2 years. Even that very broad definition of a bad landlord shows that 98% of all buildings have, as we have always said, good and effective landlords.

The federal judge hearing claims about the New York City Housing Authority’s failure to comply with lead paint rules was not amused by City defense arguments that the condition of the apartments is so poor that tenants must have known and accepted the risks.

The New York Post also reported this week that, when Mayor de Blasio announced that between 2014 and 2016 there were only four children with elevated blood lead levels in NYCHA apartments that needed repair, he had just been told that the number from 2010 to 2015 was 202.

The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, might have opened up property owners, painters and other businesses to new lead liability by refusing, Monday, to review a California State Court decision finding lead paint manufacturers liable for lead contamination in houses painted before 1951, when the companies stopped advertising lead paint for residential use. In an amicus, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed fear that the decision could expose all sorts of businesses to liability for decades-old activities that were legal at the time.

Homeless cluster housing residents placed in apartments by the City through non-profit contractors are not entitled to rent stabilization protections, according to a State Supreme Court decision reported this week in Crains and the New York Law Journal (subscription required).

The Appellate Division, First Department, Tuesday, upheld a zoning decision that calls for open space requirements to be met on a ‘zoning lot’ rather than a building by building basis, contrary to the City Department of Buildings’ recent policy. The issue was whether rooftop open space that was only accessible to a particular building’s residents could be counted as part of the total available open space in the zoning lot when considering a new project. The Court said no. Only space open to everyone on the lot counted.

Proposition 10, the California referendum on expanding rent control, is only supported by 35% of likely voters according to a poll released this week. Forty-six percent oppose the measure. Rent regulations are most popular among 18-49 year-olds and least popular among those over 65.

New York’s City Health and Housing Commissioners gave strong lip service support to the Council’s package of lead poisoning prevention bills at a hearing last week, but the written testimony suggests that virtually all the bills need amendment and some make no sense. Regarding requiring every property owner to test and abate soil and water lead, the Department of Health reported that an analysis of 219 children who had blood lead levels above 15 mcg/dl in 2017 found one child with an exposure to lead in soil and one with an exposure to lead in water, but that both were also exposed to paint hazards. It is unfortunate to find anomalies in the blood of children, because these anomalies can transcend to parts of the body such as the mouth and well, if you are looking to improve your oral health, what better than firstpost to do so, protect your gums and teeth safely. But not only our oral health but also our body, and maybe you have been asking how can you do it? well, there is a good option and is the use of weight loss pills that helps you burn calories and loose the extra pounds you have in your body, if you want to know more about it you can go to timeofisrael and there you will see all the information about it.

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City rules covering Living in Communities (LINC) rental assistance; the City Family Eviction Prevention Supplement and City Family Exit Plan Supplement (CITYFEPS) programs; the Special Exit and Prevention Supplement (SEPS) program; and the HRA HOME Tenant-Based Rental Assistance Program (HRA HOME TBRA) and New York State Family Eviction Prevention Supplement are being amended and merged beginning October 29th. Anyone with tenants in these programs should review the changes.

The New York Times investigation into President Trump’s taxes this week explores an alleged scheme in the early 1990s to inflate the costs of individual apartment improvements and major capital improvements by running purchases through a family-owned company before reselling them to the properties. The State Division of Homes and Community Renewal has indicated it will look at the claims.

Sackman Enterprises is proposing giving the City of White Plains $260,000 cash in lieu of 18 parking spaces at a downtown apartment development site because the units will be targeted at Millenials.  “Millennials don’t have cars, as a practical matter. They’re big users of Uber and Zip Cars,” a spokesperson said. Parking requirements have long been a target of affordable housing developers as well.

The Brooklyn District Attorney, Wednesday, announced the indictments of five people and two businesses for illegally removing asbestos, filing false instruments with the Department of Buildings, forgery, reckless endangerment and other crimes related to renovating four properties.

Air conditioner charges in rent stabilized and rent controlled apartments with electricity included in the rent will increase to $26.42 per month effective Monday, October 1st. If you have an HVAC repaired and maintained by a heating and cooling service like Performance Based Heating and Air, then you are fine. And if you need emergency furnace and ac repair services, then make sure to contact an ac and furnace company in Sandy, UT. And if you are looking to replace your old hvac system with a new one, then make sure to get an energy-efficient ac installation with the help of a professional air conditioning service to help you save money in the long run.

Per the Division of Housing and Community’s Renewal’s latest Operational Bulletin 84-4 update, posted online yesterday. A State Supreme Court judge this week denied New York City’s motion to dismiss the complaint by Tax Equity Now, a coalition of community and real estate groups, that City property taxes are assessed unfairly.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer counted wrong. First he said the City ‘lost’ one million apartments renting for less than $900 since 2005; then he said it was 425,000. In a report Tuesday (corrected Wednesday) he blamed deregulation of stabilized units for rising rents, ignoring the Rent Guidelines Board’s latest findings that operating expenses for the average apartment, without profit or debt service, rose from $679 to $985 a month since 2005, including property taxes that have more than doubled.

The City Council held hearings Thursday on 23 lead safety bills opposed by CHIP. Supporters complained in a new report this week that HPD enforcement is lax because only  two violations have been issued since 2005 for failure to do interim controls on apartment turnover, but downplayed the 307,000 peeling paint violations in the same time. Meanwhile, the City’s Independent Budget Office revealed that lead in water is rare, and confined mostly to smaller, older buildings with under 2 inch service lines in a handful of neighborhoods.

The New York Times, Monday, ran a profile of Aaron Carr of the Housing Rights Initiative in advance of a press conference with Councilman Ritchie Torres accusing landlords of failing to check of the box that they have rent stabilized tenants on building permit applications. Torres wants owners prosecuted.  A Department of Buildings spokesman explained that, at most, the filing errors found involve just 3 percent of construction permits. “More importantly, checking the wrong box on a permit application does not mean that any improper work happened.”

In a decision with significance for Long Island development generally, the Suffolk County Legislature’s Public Works Committee voted down a plan for 9000 apartments and offices in Brentwood because of concerns over sewer capacity and the water aquifer.

Mayor de Blasio appointed Sarah Carroll as the new Chair of the Landmarks Commission. She was the executive director since 2014 and has been on the Landmarks staff for 24 years.

The link for ABO member savings from the National Association of Home Builders in September’s New York Housing Journal was broken. The correct link is www.nahb.org/savings.

The New York City Council holds hearings Tuesday on a package of lead bills, opposed by CHIP and ABO, that would require property owners to abate all apartments on turnover (as opposed to current interim controls), test and abate soil outside buildings annually, and lower the allowable lead in paint tests so that previously cleared properties might be subject to new abatement requirements. This despite new reports this week that the number of children with elevated blood lead levels continued to decline in fiscal 2018, down 11 percent.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development finalized rules for a speculation watch list, to be posted online beginning October 27th, that will highlight buildings acquired at any cap rate below the borough median for the prior twelve months. The theory, apparently without any particular evidence, is that this will be an indicator of likely tenant harassment.

NIMBYs (and tenant activists) may complain about traffic, displacement, gentrification, and architectural integrity, but what really irks them is developers making money, according to a new research report from UCLA. Opposition to new development proposals increased by 20 percent when test subjects were given the argument that a developer was likely to earn a large profit from a building.

The latest tariffs on Chinese goods will add $1 billion to the cost of housing production, and additional levies set for January will bring the tally to $2.5 billion, according to the National Association  of Homebuilders. Products affected include granite, portland cement, framing lumber, cast iron pipe, nails, kitchen cabinets and electrical fixtures, among others. Building materials for a house nowadays have risen alarmingly in price and not to mention the cost per square area, even if you plan to build your home and you are not attractive to financial banks, the best thing for you is to avoid getting bad credit loans.

State primaries on Thursday could offer a view into what may happen in the November elections. We’ll be watching and will report to you.

Zephyr Teachout, endorsed for Attorney General by the New York Times this week, has expressly called for targeting the real estate industry.

More than $1.5 billion in Buildings and Sanitation fines are unpaid, according to a report this week, not counting $500,000 just levied on the Kushner Companies for failing to check the box that they had stabilized or controlled tenants on building permit applications, for problems like these, we recommend using mortgage broker in Sooke to access good prices within the real estate sector, and there are some great resources for commercial real estate at sites like https://spaceselectors.com/thornton/ which could help a lot in this area.

Another $285,000 in fines was just levied on building owners accused of illegal short-term rentals through Airbnb, although the largest amounts seem to be against an SRO disputing whether its use is illegal and a single-family homeowner.

DHCR updated five fact sheets concerning new leases and renewals on its website Thursday, including:

• Fact Sheet #5: Vacancy Leases in Rent Stabilized Apartments – [ PDF ]
• Fact Sheet #26: Guide to Rent Increases for Rent Stabilized Apartments in New York City – [ PDF]
• Fact Sheet #31: Guide to Rent Increases for Rent Stabilized Apartments in Nassau County – [ PDF]
• Fact Sheet #31a: Guide to Rent Increases for Rent Stabilized Apartments in Rockland County – [ PDF]
• Fact Sheet #31b: Guide to Rent Increases for Rent Stabilized Apartments in Westchester County – [ PDF]

Westbury, on Long Island, has begun the process to rezone 25 acres near the LIRR station for transit oriented development.

A Westchester single-family home development is suing the State for permission to convert to condominium status solely to get its property taxes reduced. The case has wider implications for the taxation of apartment buildings, as it fuels arguments by legislators who have already proposed eliminating the assessment of coops and condos as if they were rentals.

Rent Stabilized and market rent housing quality has been steadily improving, but public housing not so much, according to an analysis of 2017 Housing and Vacancy Survey data by the Citizens Budget Commission.

Democrat Assemblyman Brian Barnwell and Senator Michael Gianaris apparently think Rent Stabilized housing is too good and want to eliminate Major Capital Improvement Rent Increases. They’ve filed a rather confusing bill that would eliminate MCIs retroactively and give the State Division of Homes and Community Renewal discretion to grant unspecified tax credits for unspecified improvements instead.

Meanwhile, during Wednesday night’s Democratic Gubernatorial debate, Cynthia Nixon and Andrew Cuomo vied to sound more pro-tenant, with Nixon calling for universal rent control while Cuomo called for raising the high rent decontrol rent threshold and attacked NYCHA.

New requirements to distribute Fire and Emergency Preparedness Guides to tenants in New York City by October 1st have been delayed until April 30, 2019. Existing fire safety posting requirements are being changed, however, and new signs will be required as of October. Look for an email blast from CHIP with more details next week.

The new owners of a lower Manhattan building discovered that a dead rent stabilized tenant had been renewing her leases for twenty years. They are trying to evict the man who signed her name and used the apartment as an illegal office.

Mayor de Blasio announced that the City is beginning the rezoning process for development of 4.5 million square feet of commercial, academic, cultural, and institutional space on Governor’s Island. No residential use is foreseen.

Governor Cuomo has signed legislation requiring marshals to look for and provide for the safe removal of pets when performing evictions. The law stemmed from a case where a marshal apparently didn’t notice a pit bull.

It turns out that activists opposing new housing for fear of gentrification have it backwards. The more housing gets built, the fewer people are actually displaced, according to new reports.

Democrat Gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon and Lieutenant Governor candidate Jumaane Williams called for universal rent control this week, but had trouble defining it. Tenant groups statewide are making the slogan a rallying cry.

Anita Laremont was appointed Executive Director of City Planning, Wednesday. She has been general counsel to the Planning Department since 2014 and was heavily involved in drafting mandatory inclusionary zoning and the midtown East plan.

The best new interactive map of the week comes from the New York City Department of Buildings. You can click on the location of every new building permit or Alt 1 building enlargement permit and get all the details.

A family needs to earn $103,235.16 to afford the median priced New York metro area home according to an HSH.com analysis. We’re number 7. You need $274,623.19 to afford the median priced San Jose, CA home and $109,411.27 for a Boston area home. It’s all in the metro vs. city calculations, with the New York area median home price only $410,500 vs. San Jose’s $1,405,000.

How hard is development in the New York metro area? Southampton Town is buying an old motel and planning to resell it for condo development with all permits and plans in place—because prospective private buyers were scared off by the Town permit and planning process.

When you can’t build in a town, however, one possibility is to build a new one. There are at least six developments in the Hudson Valley built, or planned to be, effectively, mini-cities. “Live, work, play” is the design idea.