For those of us not privy to those conversations, did the OP ever mention why he or she used the term “default landlord” if not to describe a “default landlord?”
No, but in every other forum they dropped the term default and simply used landlord.
I’m a she, not a he.
I pointed out what was obvious to me, but not to him. Find out exactly why the landlord wants them out. How many units are in the building? Is the landlord trying to sell it? Go condo? Co-op? A few vacancy decontrols aren’t a big deal in a 40 unit building, but they are in a 10 unit building. Unfortunately, the owner of a 10 unit building who wants a few vacancy decontrols usually doesn’t have as much cash as the owner of a 40 unit building. Then I told him that he needed to find out exactly why he wanted them out before he decided if negotiating will be worth the time or effort. If he can’t afford what would make it worthwhile for them, they didn’t need to take it any further. Then I did the math for him.
After I realized he would rather spend his money gambling and making absurd posts about how to approach his landlord rather than approach this like a businessman; do some fact finding and solid calculations to get a supportable number, come up with a realistic offer and buy a decent co-op, I threw up my hands and left the thread.
Unlike the imaginary sick children, huge medical bills, kids in college and other tragic circumstances that were being bandied about on here, in reality he is an adult who lives with his parents and other family members in a 3 bedroom apartment in NYC for $900 a month. That’s approximately $150 in rest of the country money. He sits around playing online games all day, and isn’t shy about telling everyone about the thousands of dollars he blows on poker. And by thousands, I mean several thousand at at a time. He also goes to Vegas frequently. For someone with such poor math and money management skills, I found this astonishing, but there it was. I had a lot more “data” than you knew about.
Facts and figures aren’t tilting at windmills. I know what resources are available to residents here (like the housing lottery for buying units) and the OP was responding to posts in other forums. There was a lot of unrealistic bantering and expectations going on here that the math doesn’t support. You call it “disagreeing”. I call it the reality of rent stabilization and lease renewal in NYC in black and white.
Examples of the posts I was responding to would be:
if we do, wouldn’t the amount we receive have to be a high amount since rent stabilized apartment is saving us 1400/month?
*Is it true for the landlord that if they could make back the money in just 5 years, then its a great deal for them? *
He would suddenly gets $ 1 400 more each month (according to your figures). That’s certainly worth paying quite a bit, if he can afford it.
Tell him that if you were to move out, it would cost you XXX XXX over the next X years to rent something equivalent, hence that you're not interested in moving unless he offers a buy out of XXX XXX or more.
Yes, LurkerInNJ, but you don’t know what the total income is, nor do you know what the other total expenses are. So you are drawing a whole bunch of conclusions without having all the data. If he can afford to drop 5K betting on a game …
The point being that, not knowing the family’s income, the poster couldn’t even tell whether they could even afford the apartment or not, let alone whether or not they could save a lot of money. If he can afford to gamble the way he does, he can afford a $900 a month apartment. In fact, the $900 a month apartment is probably one of the reasons he has so much extra money to blow.
He is challenging the assumption that the OP will get/should get 100s of thousand in compensation because the landlord can triple the rent once he’s gone. Actually, the landlord can’t. Exactly. The math doesn’t support it. And renovations to the apartment (it’s shabby and in a not so great location) will price it out of the neighborhood. The landlord will have trouble renting it out unless the entire building gets and upgrade and the area picks up.
Um…what? What a strange assumption to make. So everyone who pays “only” $900 in rent must have tons of money in the bank? Not an assumption. He blabs about his bank accounts and money on other forums. Based upon the increases for the past 25 years, they should have a pile of money in the bank, and apparently he does have a pile of money in the bank.
The only thing you’ve said that someone took issue with was the ridiculous assertion that the OP has certainly saved a bunch of money, made without knowng a damn thing about his financial situation. I thought he was either slow or a troll, so I took it upon myself to do some recon. In seeing that he was for real, I learned quite a bit about his financial situation because he blabs about it all over the internet. Just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean I don’t.
Lurker, you seem to be in a knowledgeable position here but you have to realize that no one could have known this was some ongoing saga that you had been closely following. I think you need to ratchet down the indignation a little.
Good stuff overall though in this thread. Especially #47, imho.
I had forgotten all about this thread after I threw up my hands until it was bumped up today, when I had the opportunity to read about all my offensive “assumptions”.
Anyway, thanks.
tl;dr
A common trick to get rid of tenants in NYC (can you say “Trump”?) is to send "repairmen
in to remove the toilet, explaining that it “needs repairs”.
Of course, you will never see it again.
This is when you go the store and buy a $50 toilet and a ring and pair of flange bolts (or keep these in your vehicle or nearby storage area - do NOT keep them in the unit - they will disappear - either before or after you install them)