Renting Condo without Going through the Board

$150 for credit check is against the new tenant law, report your board to de Blasio

Unless you claim tenants is your family using your apartment for a year or more, they can prohibit her from entering the building. Check your house rules and relevant details for the penalties.

Those fees are annoying but they are why you do due diligence, and they benefit the people who actually live there, which is a worthwhile cause. Don't like em? Get thyself on the Board.

The move in fee may be tied to the use of the elevators, so you might argue out of that.

If you rent without permission, the condo and the tenant can both sue you. Your lease to the tenant represents that you have legal ability to enter a lease. If you don't, and the tenant is locked out, you could face a big damages bill.

Anton, a board can charge an owner whatever fees it wants. And it was Albany, not Hizzoner, that passed the fee restriction.

While $1200 move in / move out seems excessive, there is indeed some wear and tear on the building hallways, elevator with every move in move out. Processing and admin likely goes to the managing agent.

Now there's a condo I might buy into.

The imposition of significant fees encourages resident owners over investors and transients, and attempts to recoup some of the real costs of staffing and wear and tear incurred by frequent tenant turnover. Too bad more condos aren't as well run.

Why don't you pass some of the fees to the tenant? $600 move-in fee doesn't seem so outrageous all of a sudden, esp. if your condo rents out to $4000+ a month, which would the median for Manhattan.

I think it's useless to try to go against the condo association--you can try, but it might not end well. Remember overhead is priced into the market value: the fact that the rental fees are higher and cut into the total income probably meant that it was cheaper when you bought it. Now if you didn't do the due diligence and the math, then it's on you.

In the meanwhile, if you really cared enough, you can try to go on the condo board. But I bet you make more than $100 an hour, right?

Going against the condo association is still much better than going against a coop board and management

If/When the building finds out- you will be required to pay all fees plus fines.

Sloux, you don't pass on the fees to the tenant because it is now illegal to do so. The tenant can be charged fees not to exceed $20 for credit check/move-in/processing and $50 for a payment made more than 5 days late. Such becomes the law when landlords spend decades abusing their customers.

I think many of the new rules may not apply to a individual condo unit.

Care to elaborate? Although there is some drafting ambiguity, the law's sponsor was clear that the legislative intent was to include all rental leases.

See attached. Even the $20 credit limit does not apply to fee imposed by coop / condo board. The spirit of the law is that the fees do not go into owners pocket. I am sure there is a more detailed document and are differences in interpretation of the law.

https://www.dos.ny.gov/licensing/pdfs/DOS-Guidance-Tenant-Protection-Act-9.13.19.pdf

Parties prohibited for collecting fees are “landlord, lessor, sub-lessor or grantor”.

Coop and condo boards may slide under that exception.

https://www.habitatmag.com/Publication-Content/Bricks-Bucks/2019/September-2019/Application-Fees

The condos fees are on the unit owner, not the tenant. Not covered by the law. Whether the unit owner can pass them on is a different question.

Sport, Most condo specify which fee is for the owner and which ones for renter (I realize it is arbitrary). Owners typically have to pay the fee for board waiver of right of first refusal / application to rent out their unit and related admin fee if any. Renters pay for move in and move out fee and the renter vetting / processing fees charged by managing agent.

It seems like nonsense. If condo wants to impose a fee for sublease this I suppose is one way to do it. Fold it into the rent then if you can't pass it as a fee.

This is exactly why these laws are all nonsense. The only people they protect are people who can't do 2nd grade arithmetic.

I'm disappointed that the guidance left a giant exception for condo boards. Hopefully this drafting error will be cleaned up in the next session.