Landlord Entitled to Unpaid Rent from Tenant Who Broke Lease During Pandemic
LVT Number: #33469
Landlord who owned a condominium unit sued former tenant to recover unpaid rent for the apartment after tenant broke her lease in 2020 and moved out before her lease expired. Landlord asked the court to grant a money judgment for unpaid rent and dismiss tenant's defenses without trial.
The court ruled for landlord. Tenant had moved into the unregulated apartment in January 2014 and renewed the lease three times thereafter. At the time tenant moved out, in 2020, her June 5, 2019, renewal lease was still in effect until Aug. 31, 2021, at a rent of $4,650 per month. Tenant claimed that, during the COVID pandemic services at the building were reduced and conditions rendered the apartment uninhabitable or unusable causing breach of the warranty of habitability. But the conditions tenant described -- people sleeping against the building, garbage building up, some boarded-up windows, and a toilet leaking one night with no engineer onsite to fix it -- were typical and could not be reasonably described as "dangerous, hazardous or detrimental to life, health or safety."
Landlord also mitigated damages as best as possible during the pandemic by hiring a real estate broker within two weeks, lowering the monthly rent, scheduling onsite showings as soon as possible after government shut-down orders were lifted, and finding a new tenant for a lease start date of June 15, 2021, and renting the unit at $3,800 per month. At the time that tenant moved out, landlord's only obligation under the law in effect at that time was to "take reasonable and customary actions to rent the premises." HSTPA amendments to the law concerning landlord's obligation to mitigate damages that tenant argued were violated didn't apply because the lease had been renewed on June 5, 2019, before HSTPA was enacted. The court granted landlord a money judgment for $58,974, as well as attorney's fees.
Amran Props. LLC Series 1 v. Watson: Index No. 157819/2021, 2024 NY Slip Op 33549(U)(Sup. Ct. NY; 10/7/24; Goetz, J)