Landlord Tenant

But we are talking about residential here so let’s get back on the subject of residential tenants, which every Landlord Tenant Attorney New York should know. The laws in New York particularly in New York City have become increasingly more and more favorable to residents and when I say residents I mean the tenants and if they’re more favorable to tenants then this means they are less favorable to landlords and if they’re less favorable to landlords and more favorable to tenants it means that the residences or the tenants in residential real estate have a lot of bargaining power and have a lot of leverage. This is why in a lot of instances there’s a concept called cash for keys and what cash for keys means is that landlords have been known to pay tenants to vacate the premises and surrender the premises back to the landlords. Whether or not you think this is a noteworthy practice is beside the point it just happens, and why does it happen? It happens because the laws are so favorable to tenants and unfavorable to landlords.  When dealing with both residential and Commercial landlord tenant relationships there are several things that the two groups have in common. or well not necessarily in common but things to look out for and pay attention to and addressing that relationship. The first is to see whether or not there is a written lease governing the relationship. written leases are best in both contexts because it really demonstrates what the relationship looks like between and among the parties and that’s important because you want to see what the respective rights and obligations are for the the parties. For example it’s important to know what the least term is and what we mean by least term we mean how long the lease is for is it a partial year? is it multiple year? is it some other term? And this raises another question and the question is what happens when there is not a written lease? What happens is there is typically a tenancy created by operation of Law and that tenancy is called a month to month tenancy.  Just ask a Landlord Tenant Attorney New York.

And there are typically two types of proceedings in both landlord tenant commercial and landlord tenant residential environments say all Landlord Tenant Attorney New York who know what they are talking about. And the proceedings are typically in landlord tenant court and that’s a separate court from the Supreme Court in New York and another way of referring to that court is called housing court and there are five counties in the New York City area they are the Bronx, Queens, Kings, New York, and Richmond Counties.  Kings County is Brooklyn and Richmond County is Staten Island. They all have their separate housing courts which are part of the Civil courts in those counties. And when I refer to proceedings like I did above I’m referring to landlord tenant proceedings to get rid of the tenant or to address a landlord tenant issue. The most common of landlord tenant proceedings are eviction proceedings where the landlord is trying to get rid of the tenant. This happens when there is like I mentioned above, one of two circumstances one of them is non-payment that means that the  tenant is not paying rent and the landlord wants to evict the tenant for not paying rent because the landlord of course collects rent and that’s how the landlord presumably makes its money. The other proceeding is what’s known as a holdover proceeding and again when a Landlord Tenant Attorney New York says proceeding they refer to eviction proceeding and a holdover proceeding is where the tenant stays past the expiration date of the lease.

The remedy to landlords is not limited to landlord tenant court.  Landlord tenant court however is where most of the eviction proceedings or the proceedings are commenced to get rid of a tenant. There is another option however and it is in Supreme Court of the state of New York and it’s not called eviction the remedy here that a landlord seeks is called ejectment. While those two terms are different the end result is essentially the same and that is that the landlord is seeking to have the tenant vacate the premises. One of the tools that a tenant can use in both the commercial and residential context is the order to show calls. This is a very powerful tool that a tenant can use because the tenant can then stall or thwart the eviction process which causes substantial delays and gives the tenant a lot of leverage.

Whether you are a landlord or a tenant we Landlord Tenant Attorney New York are here to help you and we as I mentioned before we have a lot of experience in both the commercial and residential landlord tenant contexts. We’ve appeared in court in all five boroughs and continue to appear as more clients need our help you can reach us at (212) 500-1891 to schedule an initial consultation which we are pleased to offer at no charge to you.  Looking forward to hearing from you. When you do call please be sure to have information relevant information available so that we can help you including emails text messages a copy of your lease and any other important documents.