Do Landlords Have to Let You Know They Are Coming to the Apartment

If yous are moving into a New York City rental apartment, it'south best to have a articulate thought of what you lot tin can await your landlord to provide. Estrus and hot water are a given, of grade—you lot shouldn't take to put up with unlivable weather condition—but window blinds? Don't count on finding those.

Even though landlords don't accept to provide a number of things that might seem pretty essential, similar a fridge or stove—most of them do anyway. Landlords install major appliances to attract renters, not just in market-rate apartments but in affordable housing and rent stabilized units. After all, if you saw two apartments and one had a refrigerator and the other didn't, which one are you going to employ for?

Merely information technology can be a shock to see an apartment in person that lacks something you're used to—like closets in the bedrooms. You may observe them missing in very one-time buildings, where New Yorkers traditionally made practice with wardrobes to hold their clothes.

[Editor's annotation: An earlier version of this article was published in April 2021. We are presenting it over again with updated data for February 2022.]

There are numerous state and local laws that outline a landlord's responsibility—so many in fact that the Land'southward Courtroom of Appeals once referred to NYC housing laws as an "impenetrable thicket" of rules, regulations, and statutes, according to tenant attorney Sam Himmelstein, a partner at Himmelstein McConnell Gribben & Joseph (a Brick Underground sponsor).

1 of the most important gear up of rules is the warranty of habitability, which ensures the conditions in your flat don't compromise your health in any way. The NYC Housing Maintenance Code, the Multiple Dwelling Law, and the provisions of the Rent Stabilization Regulations are also relevant depending on the blazon of place yous live in.

For clarity hither'southward a listing of 11 key items landlords are required to provide (in most NYC rental buildings), followed past a list of what they are not—and you may be in for a surprise hither.

1. Heat, and hot and cold water

During the wintertime months from October 1st through May 31st, when the mercury dips below 55 degrees exterior, a landlord must provide rut for a temperature of 68 during the day (6 a.thou. to ten p.m.). At night at that place must be a temperature of at to the lowest degree 62 degrees maintained, regardless of the outside temperature.

This is what'southward referred to as "oestrus flavor" and building owners face fines during this time if apartments are also cold.

two. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

Landlords must provide and install at least one approved and operational carbon monoxide detector and smoke detector in each apartment. "The caveat here is that y'all—the renter—must maintain a set of working batteries. At move-in, the appliance must be working, but keeping it working is on you lot," says Mike Jeneralczuk, an agent at Existent NY.

If you break or remove a detector, you are required to replace information technology.

Observe Your Adjacent Place

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3. Burn safety measures

Your apartment should take a fire and emergency preparedness guide posted on the within of your front door. This information too needs to exist posted in the common area, and distributed to each home, new tenants, and annually during fire prevention calendar week. It'south worth a read too–it will tell you how to stay condom in a burn down. Generally this guidance will direct y'all to leave the edifice, close the door, and call 911. In some buildings, however, you may be safer staying in your apartment. The fire escape plan will tell you if this is the case.

Another feature of buildings with three or more apartments is self-endmost doors—these can help prevent fire and smoke from one apartment spreading apace throughout the building. Your landlord must too brand sure in that location are articulate unobstructed exits. And if you accept a gas stove y'all can request stove knob covers which can go on them off-limits from pets or kids. If there's a child living with you under the age of six, stove knob covers should be provided regardless of your request.

Besides, if you're thinking of installing a key-locked gate on your fire escape window, or a double cylinder lock, call back once again—they're illegal.

4. Pest-gratuitous backdrop

Chances are you will come across a mouse or a roach (but hopefully not a rat) while living in a NYC flat, and your landlord has an obligation to keep the building free of pests. Property owners are also required to use ongoing measures to forbid infestations in or effectually their buildings. This is a requirement of Local Law 55, passed in 2018. If mice, rats, or roaches are in either an apartment or mutual area, it's a violation and the landlord faces fines.

Apartment building owners are also required to annually inspect units for indoor allergen hazards, including mice, rats, roaches, and mold.

As for bedbugs, New York State law requires property owners to disclose infestation history dating back one year to new tenants through the bedbug disclosure class y'all go with a lease. They must also submit an annual study on bedbug infestations and eradication methods.

5. Lead-free walls

NYC banned the use of lead-based paint in residential buildings in 1960, but it tin can still exist in buildings congenital before then. The metropolis's Childhood Atomic number 82 Poisoning Prevention Deed requires landlords identify and remediate atomic number 82-based paint hazards in apartments where there are immature children under the age of vi years old.

6. Paint or wallpaper on the walls

Landlords demand to paint or embrace your apartment'due south walls with wallpaper—and then no exposed sheetrock—and they should also repaint or recover the walls every 3 years. Sarah Adler, an agent at Corcoran, says the requirement to repaint oft comes every bit a pleasant surprise to renters.

"If someone is settling into a place and they accept been there for v years or and so, sometimes they are not even enlightened of the fact that they accept the right to have that apartment painted every 3 years," she says.

The only time the cost of painting tin exist passed to the tenant is if you request a special brand of pigment or a detail colour, or if you lot cause damage that requires a new paint job.

7. Windows and lighting

With some exceptions, every room, including kitchens and bathrooms, should take at least 1 window opening onto the street, yard, or other outdoor space. This applies to apartment buildings built after 1929 and is outlined in the Multiple Domicile Police force. Each window must properly calorie-free all portions of the room.

"There's a formula, and information technology depends on the size of the room, but in order to qualify as a room it has to run across low-cal and air requirements," Himmelstein says.

If there isn't a window—and Adler says many buildings do not take a window in the kitchen or the bathroom—in that location are ventilation requirements.

The police states there must be at least vi changes per 60 minutes of the air volume of a cooking space without a window or if it is on the top flooring, information technology can have a ventilated skylight at to the lowest degree one foot wide.

8. Window guards

Owners must provide and install window guards on all windows, including first-flooring bathrooms and windows leading onto a balustrade or terrace, in apartments where a child x years of age or younger resides, and in each common area window, if at that place are whatsoever.

Even if you don't live with a kid of ten years or younger, merely yous want guards—say you accept friends or family who bring young children to visit y'all—you tin notwithstanding request them and the landlord is required to install them.

Yous run into window guards near often in pre-war buildings. Adler says in new structure, windows only open iv inches for safety reasons, making the window guards redundant.

9. Locked front door and a peephole

"Virtually buildings must have a locked front door to provide some security so people can't walk right into the building," Himmelstein says.

In addition, your entry door should have a lock, and the landlord must give you at to the lowest degree one key to it. In an apartment building with more than than iii units, the door should take a heavy-duty deadbolt operable by a key from the outside and a thumb-plow from the inside, equally well equally a heavy-duty latch set. In that location should too exist a chain door guard so you can partially open your door. This is all outlined in the Housing Maintenance Lawmaking.

There as well should be an operating peephole in your archway door, and located in a identify that lets y'all view whatever person immediately outside the archway door.

10. Mail service service

The Housing Maintenance Code too makes clear landlords are required to provide and maintain approved mailboxes and directories of tenants and so they can become their mail. With the rise of next 24-hour interval delivery and online shopping, landlords are unlikely to argue with this, considering if they don't provide mailboxes, they have to take in the mail themselves and get their own employees to distribute it.

xi. Amenities

If you live in a market place-rate apartment, your landlord must requite you access to the amenities spelled out in your lease. In a rent-regulated flat the amenities you have are governed by the Rent Stabilization Law's concept of required services. "These are services provided to you when you moved in, and they have to be maintained," Himmelstein says.

If you live in a rent-stabilized apartment and the landlord decides to take away the gym or the bike storage, they'd have to inquire permission of the Partitioning of Housing and Community Renewal. Sometimes DHCR gives authorization but with conditions. For example, if the doorman is discontinued, the landlord must come upward with a replacement that provides an equivalent level of security, which could be an intercom system or camera.

If the landlord does non ask permission or permission isn't granted you can file a reduction of services complaint and your rent will be rolled back and frozen until the services are returned.

In a market-charge per unit apartment, if a detail amenity is listed in the lease, similar the laundry room or a doorman, then they must exist provided for the duration of that lease. If they are not, it's a breach of contract and the tenant would be entitled to some kind of damages, Himmelstein says.

xi things landlords are not required to provide

Many first-time renters are surprised to observe out what's excluded from a landlord's list of responsibilities, simply these things shouldn't come as a shock: Your lease spells out what you can expect—and conversely, what is not included, a good reminder to e'er read your charter very carefully and in accelerate of moving in.

"The clear-cutting respond is the lease defines what's nowadays," Jeneralczuk says.

Beneath are some of the more than mutual civilities and services you lot might find missing in a NYC rental.

1. Microwave and dishwasher

A lot of renters, specially new ones, assume a kitchen will come with a microwave, only it'south your responsibility to purchase one if you lot desire i. The same goes for the dishwasher. Of class a lot of landlords put these appliances in place in order to make their apartments more than competitive and attract new tenants.

"Some clients from outside New York are shocked that landlords sometimes do non provide them. Sure, they're nowadays in a lot of apartments, simply they come with a price tag and are definitely non a given," Jeneralczuk says.

ii. Air conditioner and installation

If landlords are required to go along the estrus on in the winter, you might await they'd have to provide cooling in the summer merely that'south non the case. When you're looking for a rental and viewing a list you might even see an AC unit in the flat, but find it's gone by the time you motility in.

Many NYC tenants buy their own in-window Air-conditioning units and and so take them with them when they get out.

If you buy an AC, you'll also exist responsible for installing it. Your management company won't pay for this but they may exist able to requite you the name of a contractor and then the install can exist done safely.

3. Refrigerator and stove

You lot'd exist difficult pressed to find an flat without a refrigerator or stove but a landlord is not legally required to provide either of these appliances.

In some apartments the refrigerator is very small-scale, or the stove might merely exist a cooktop or two burner every bit opposed to a full-size oven. Himmelstein says it's possible the landlord could say the tenant has to provide their own appliances and repair them at their own expense.

Whatever appliances owners do provide, they are responsible for keeping them in working order. A landlord is as well responsible for providing the gas to power a stove so even if you are asked to install your own appliance, the ability must be there to make information technology function.

iv. Burn down extinguishers

The New York City burn lawmaking doesn't crave that your landlord put portable burn down extinguishers in your apartment or in any public hallways or corridors in the building.

This might seem counterintuitive only the fire and emergency preparedness guide attached to your front door has the instructions the Fire Department wants you to follow—ordinarily go out the edifice, shut the door, and call 911. Asking y'all to struggle with a fire extinguisher you take probably never used before will tiresome your efforts to get out, delay you from alerting the Fire Department, and increase risks for residents in the building.

You lot can, of course, buy your ain extinguishers simply you should nevertheless follow the fire escape plan provided by your landlord and keep in listen that extinguishers benefit from periodic inspections by a licensed company.

Ane caveat: A stationary fire extinguisher must be installed in whatever expanse with fuel-burning equipment, then you should run across i in your building'southward mechanical room where the boiler or hot water heater is installed.

5. Window screens

Window screens are a provision that many people wait, but which landlords are not required to provide. Adler says this is often a surprise for tenants who find mosquitoes are a big problem in the urban center during the summertime.

"Nigh windows can only open the four inches for New York City kid safety, then depending on what kind of window information technology is, sometimes the screens need to be custom built," she says. Another option is to purchase a tension screen that tin can be fitted into an open window but this is not a landlord's responsibility.

6. Window shades and mantle rods

Many apartments are listed without curtains or blinds and if you don't see them in the listing, don't assume it'south considering the owner is measuring upwards for an install. Landlords in NYC aren't required to provide curtains or blinds for your windows. That's on you.

7. Light bulb replacements

The lights should be working when you motion in, but when the bulbs burn out, it's your job to replace them.

eight. Reimbursement for personal losses or damages

Landlords are not responsible if the apartment is damaged unless information technology is due to gross negligence.

If in that location'south a leak and some property gets damaged, the landlord is non responsible for your possessions. Occasionally, a landlord may concord to a settlement, but the solution is for tenants to have renter'south insurance. It'due south not very expensive and covers these kinds of situations.

9. Height locks and replacement keys

A landlord needs to provide just i functioning lock on your flat door. Whatsoever boosted locks you might want for security are your responsibility.

If yous lock yourself out and your super is not available to let you in, you lot will have to call a locksmith and pay for the new lock and keys.

ten. Closets

A sleeping accommodation in NYC must be at least lxxx square feet in size with at least i window but non all bedrooms come with closets. A tenant might inquire a landlord to build a cupboard before moving in, or might ask for money toward buying a wardrobe, just that's entirely up to the landlord and not a requirement.

11. Security for delivered packages

Package theft is an ongoing issue every bit people rely on online deliveries. Information technology's particularly a challenge for walk-up buildings, which typically do non take a doorman.

A bundle left by a tenant'due south forepart door which is then stolen is not the landlord's responsibleness. "Even if there is no parcel room and it is left in a entrance hall, they are not responsible," Adler says. A property managing director might be able to assistance find out who stole the package through the video photographic camera organization but they are not liable for the loss.

Previous versions of this commodity included writing and reporting past Donna Thou. Airoldi.

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Source: https://www.brickunderground.com/rent/nyc-landlord-requirements-and-what-is-not-provided