Landlord Can't Claim Tenant Paid Preferential Rent Without Proof
LVT Number: #30729
Landlord sued to evict rent-stabilized tenant for failing to sign a proper and timely offered renewal lease. Tenant claimed that she refused to sign the renewal lease because it wasn't offered on the same terms and conditions as her original lease.
The trial court ruled for tenant. Tenant's vacancy lease, commencing May 1, 2012, stated on the first page that tenant's monthly rent was $899. Stapled to that lease was a preferential rent rider stating that the legal regulated rent was $1,525 and the preferential rent was $899. The lease, preferential rent rider, and other riders had been stapled, unstapled, and restapled together. Tenant testified that she may have signed other documents when she first rented the apartment, but her unstapled copy of the vacancy lease was only two pages long and contained no preferential rent rider. Subsequent renewal leases listed both a preferential rent and higher legal regulated rent and included preferential rent riders.
The court found that tenant's vacancy lease didn't include a preferential rent rider. The form lease listed only $899 as the rent and didn't refer to any attached preferential rent rider. If the preferential rent rider was issued to tenant within 30 days of the initial lease signing, it still wasn't signed by landlord. That document also was undated and landlord failed to prove that it was signed at the same time the lease was signed. Landlord's trial testimony about the initial lease was unreliable. And annual DHCR rent registrations filed by landlord contained various errors. Tenant credibly testified that landlord didn't give her a copy of the preferential rent rider she may have signed in 2012 until five years later, after she filed complaints with the DHCR. It didn't matter if tenant signed preferential rent riders in connection with her renewal leases, since the Rent Stabilization Code required each of those renewals to be offered on the same "terms and conditions" as her vacancy lease.
Asal Realty LLC v. Kaune: Index No. 68128/18, 2020 NY Slip Op 50350(U)(Civ. Ct. Bronx; 3/9/20; Lutwak, J)