DHCR Uses Waiver Rule to Set Apartment's Legal Rent

Rent-stabilized tenant complained of rent overcharge. The DRA found no overcharge but ordered landlord to offer tenant a renewal lease based on the current legal rent of $623 per month. Landlord appealed and lost. Landlord claimed that the legal regulated rent was actually $954 per month when the "waiver rule" was applied. But the DHCR found that cancelled checks, rent ledgers, leases, owner letters to the tenant, and rent registrations, all showed that landlord charged, and tenant paid, $623 per month between the July 1, 2016, base date to July 1, 2017. And there is no requirement that the waiver rule can be applied only when there is a written agreement creating such waiver. The DRA properly found that landlord's charging and collecting of a rent lower than the legal rent waived the rent down to that lower rent. 

R A Cohen & Associates Inc.: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. IS410016RK (6/22/21)[8-pg. document]