Fraudulent landlord

It is none of your business. You have no first hand knowledge of his precise financial condition or dealings with any financial lender. Your suspicions or conjecture (or more likely your anger and frustration) with the LL are not justification for you to meddle in the LL's affairs. Short of overt on-going criminality, there ought not even be a discussion of how you can interfere in this person's life. And even then I think the answer could be debated. If someone were in harm's way because of his behavior, I'd have a different response.

If I were you, I'd focus much more on getting the security deposit back on the day you vacate and working hard to negotiate that.

you might think about agreeing to stay an extra 2 months and using security deposit as rent. a compromise which might help both of you.

You're doing the right thing by not changing the ConEd name, good call! Landlord has no right to hold your security deposit for 6 months. He is NOT supposed to be using your security deposit for his operating expenses at all, he is supposed to put that money into a separate account and not touch it.

I agree that your main problem is getting your security deposit back. I like opheus12's idea, get something in writing from LL saying that he can keep the deposit, in exchange you get 2 months residence as a holdover tenant, and then you get the hell out in two months.

Otherwise you are going to court to get that security deposit back, assuming he has any money left by then, and I am worried about you getting it back at all (never mind in 6 months).

The banks are supposed to take care of their own balance sheets (I know, LOL) but you need to take care of yours. I'm sure you're right, he will continue to misrepresent the facts to banks, because he is desperate; however if he is like a lot of other people in his situation, he is heading for foreclosure anyway.

And if it makes you feel any better, banks have gone back to traditional research on loans and he probably won't get away with faking things. That's why I am willing to guess that he could end up in foreclosure.

Good luck to you! You're the kind of honest leaseholder I love to have in my properties [I don't own in NYC area], landlord should have treated you much better.

{Manhattan real estate agent}

This guy is not going to magically have the money in six months. You will be just another unsecured creditor at that time, likely behind his credit card company, his family, etc.

Landlords can be as much a credit risk as a tenant.

Why would you have agreed to 2 months security deposit at the beginning?

Excellent that you have honored your principles & not taken part in the LL shenanigans. LL may or may not be misrepresenting the situation but that is none of your affair so drop it; you need to concentrate on getting out whole. Hopefully you have 2 more months left on your lease & you will stop paying rent NOW. It seems that any monies you cannot recoup in this manner may well be gone. Good luck & keep your eye on the ball which is your money, not the LL's affairs.

>>Hopefully you have 2 more months left on your lease & you will stop paying rent NOW<<

Speak to an attorney before doing anything like ceasing to pay rent. Advice such as the above quoted is likely to earn you some major damage on your credit score.

^^ make that 'following advice such as the above quoted...'

1) My lanaldord is having trouble paying his mortgage so he is trying to get a lower rate so he can make the payments,
2) I'm going to do everything I can to stop him from doing that, so
3) the apartment will get foreclosed on, my leasehold interest will be extinguished, and I will end up getting thrown out before the end date of my lease since the landlord doesn't own the property anymore,
4) Since my landlord will no longer have any interest in the apartment, he will have no incentive to return any of my security deposit.

What do you think of my concept?

What is the concept?

I'm pretty sure 30yrs is being sarcastic...and is on the same page as everyone else, which is worry about your deposit - and leave the desperate irrational LL alone.

Booker: more than that. I was referring to biting one's own nose to spite one's face: anything the tenant does to "damage" the landlord, either passively or actively, will lessen their chances of a positive outcome. If the LL is going to get a lower monthly payment and thus be able to hang onto the unit, it's not a BAD thing for the tenant. If the LL is unable to and loses the unit, it can only result in worse things happening for the tenant, not better.

are you kidding me? landlord tenant is rarely a symbiotic relationship. obviously we see what side you are on, but the tenant should be, first, doing everything to protect himself (2 months security??? crazy, get it back now and stop paying rent), and second, doing everything to take advantage, aggressively, of the situation like getting lower rent starting immediately including an incentive. A tenant should not be at the mercy of a landlord's bad decisions and just the simple fact that this has arisen means that the tenant has already been harmed because he's not getting the quiet enjoyment he's entitled to.

Gee, Gillian, you make no sense at all. It may be that the tenant is already closer than 2 mos. to the end of the lease; renegotiate a lower rent & an incentive at the end of a lease that he/she wants to terminate? And the tenant harmed & not having quiet enjoyment of the premises? It appears that the only harm the tenant has endured is by sticking his/her nose in another's affairs by wanting to be the morals police. Butthole should recoup as much money as possible now & begin aggressively seeking their next domicile.

Hi to all and thanks for your comments.
I am actually 1 month away from the end of the lease, so I can't stop paying now in order to be made whole. Further, it may be wiser not to break any clauses of the lease (such as stopping rent payment) in case I end up going to court.

As I am 1 month away from the term of the lease, I am somewhat indifferent to what happens to the owner and his apartment after I leave.

I will naturally focus on getting my 2 months deposit back (for info, I had to leave 2 months as I am a newly arrived permanent resident and therefore had no credit history at the time, despite a decent salary).

However, just in the way bad tenants are reported by an impact on their credit score, I feel that fraudulent owners should also be held responsible for their bad actions. If you know a bank is going to be robbed, would you call the police? Probably... If you know that your landlord, who also happens to have made your life as a tenant miserable, is trying to defraud a bank, why not act (btw, if you assume this to happen on a larger scale, you can imagine the potential losses for the banks, hence government bailouts, hence our money as taxpayers being used to cover up for bad banking due diligence and fraud that was not denounced (i know it's pushing it a bit far, but hey...)).

In case the deposit is not returned, what is the process for legal action?

@ drdrd: the tenant did not put his nose in other peoples' affairs. the tenant was asked repeatedly by the landlord to act in a way where he would be knowingly facilitating mortgage fraud. As a permanent resident, I am adament on having a morally irreproachable conduct in the US (the US government would be the first to hold that against me if I applied for citizenship lateron).

Generally, in the U.S. there is no affirmative obligation on the part of any person to report suspected criminal activity or to investigate suspicions to determine if there is such activity occurring. Unless questioned by a federal law enforcement officer (to whom, if you choose to speak, you must give truthful answers), you are not required to report on people. The exceptions come if you have some affirmative duty to protect a person whom you know is being or is about to be harmed (e.g., a parent-child relationship). Mere knowledge or presence does not create some obligation on an individual's part to act.

Here, there is no way the tenant can know the full situation and most is rank speculation. I would advise against wading into this mess. If a LL asks you to do something wrongful, decline (as was done here). But the idea of turning police informant based on this alone seems a bit over the top to me. Live out your lease and get out taking whatever steps necessary to get your deposit back or applied to remaining rents owed.

beefhole's raising of "permanent alien" etc is not based in any reality of the criminal justice or immigration laws of the US. What would be an issue is if one did agree to participate in some fraud like signing of false documents. But since the OP here did no such thing, this is all making much of a situation that is currently nothing.

For a foreign alien guy, maybe you should be more respectful of the names you choose to post under. Beefhole is inappropriate. Maybe you and the landlord need to rethink your approaches.

I saw a large 1br at the Visionaire marketed with the demand for 2 months security, "no matter how good the credit"

Makes you wonder why.

Thanks for the info Kylewest. I wasn't sure I would risk anything if ever I said "yes" (which is not the case). Will just run out the lease and hope for a better landlord next time.

@ ITT_EIS: i fail to see how beefhole is inappropriate. The nickname comes from playing online games with friends long back and just means I used to get shot way too often (hence a walking piece of meet riddled with bullet holes).

beefy: you may want to reconsider your nickname. seriously. it suggests something quite different to most people i suspect. it is actually too embarassing for me to type it now that itt_eis mentions it.

Beefhole certainly doesn't sound classy; I was thinking of a carnivore, perhaps, but I've got an off-color mind, KW, so I do see your point.