Four-Year Rule Applied to Complaint Filed by Deregulated Tenant

Tenant complained of rent overcharge. The DRA ruled against tenant, finding that she wasn’t rent stabilized. Tenant appealed and lost. The base rent date for tenant’s complaint was May 12, 2008, four years before filing on May 12, 2012. In June 2004, landlord filed an exit registration for tenant’s apartment stating that the last legal regulated rent was $1,400 and that the apartment had been deregulated due to high-rent vacancy deregulation. Since the apartment was deregulated on the base rent date, the Rent Administrator properly applied the four-year rule to dismiss tenant’s complaint.

Tenant claimed that there was owner fraud requiring examination of the rent history before the base rent date. Tenant pointed out that rent registration showed that the apartment rent increased from $675 to $1,000 in 2003, and from $1,000 to $2,000 in 2004. But a mere increase in the rent is insufficient to trigger an investigation of the base date rent. And landlord’s filing of an exit registration in 2004 was consistent with landlord’s claim of prior deregulation. Tenant also claimed that the building was subject to J-51, but the J-51 tax abatement granted in 1993 had expired by 2004. There was no indicia of fraud in this case that would trigger a pre-base date examination of the apartment’s rent history.

Choe: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. CV410023RT (6/22/15) [5-pg. doc.]