Court Finds Apartment Was Vacancy Deregulated, Despite Altman Decision

Landlord sued to evict tenant, claiming that tenant was unregulated. Tenant argued that he was rent stabilized. The court ruled for tenant and dismissed the case because an appellate court in the case of Altman v. 285 W. Fourth, LLC had ruled that the rent of a prior vacating tenant must be over the high-rent vacancy decontrol threshold before an apartment is subject to deregulation. Landlord appealed and won.  Landlord proved that the prior rent-stabilized tenant’s last rent was $1,836.20 when he moved out. When a 20 percent vacancy increase was added to new tenant’s rent, this brought the rent over the $2,000 high-rent deregulation threshold in effect at that time, and therefore the apartment became deregulated. The court refused to follow the higher court’s ruling in Altman, finding that, “we do not interpret the contents of a single sentence in the decision in Altman v. 285 W Fourth, LLC . . . so broadly as to effectuate a sea change in nearly two decades of settled statutory and decisional law.”

233 East 5th Street LLC v. Smith: 2016 NY Slip Op 26404 (App. T. 1 Dept.; 12/8/16; Schoenfeld, JP, Shulman, Gonzalez, JJ)