Written Notice Via Email

Do it if you have the time.
Sounds like you told them you would not renew, they realized they couldn’t find another tenant and then tried to negotiate you into staying over 60 days. You have emails.

This guy has I am sure done this before and will do it again.

Security deposit theft is a classic landlord game in NYC and since the money is in their hands, its easy for them to gamble you won’t take them to small claims.

I don’t think the reason they are claiming to keep the deposit is one of the allowed reasons. Others with more experience can weigh in on that.

You may also be able to get this handled through the Attorney General's office--I'd try there before resorting to small claims court.

Their claim is likely unsupportable, but only you can weigh how much aggravation you are willing to endure to recover the deposit through small claims court. It will not be an insubstantial effort on your part. I seriously doubt the landlord will do the same to seek to recover the fake unpaid rent (which also seems like double-dipping if the kept your deposit and want a second month's rent). Landlords do not do well in NYC courts.

But Bramstar is right. There is an online complaint form for security deposit disputes on the NY Attorney General's website.

Jasper, Try a firm letter to the building managing agent (see if you can find the owner's lawyer or some other representative of the owner) laying out your case and tell them purely based on principle you will be willing to spend significant time and money on legal process and Attorney General complaint to ensure that they do not do it to anyone else.

The reason for the lease to specify the form of notice is to ensure the LL actually receives it. Your email reply acknowledging your move-out shows the LL knew your intention and accepted it. This documentation should hold up well in court. Courts hate debates on notice when it's obvious the notice was received, but it's a classic argument by litigious New Yorkers of all stripes.

Did your lease term end on the day you moved out, or you did an early termination? If your lease ended when you moved out, you needed to provide no notice, simply not renew. If it was an early termination, it's a little trickier, but the fact pattern that you outline is clear that they had received notice.

As for bill collectors, tell them not to call you again. They have to respect that and can only then contact you to serve notice of an actual lawsuit against you.

What’s in your lease? Notices can be specified as needing to be via certified mail, or email, or whatever. Even if it says “certified mail”, I wouldn’t want to be defending their side in court.

More importantly, to reiterate George’s point, I don’t really get why you would need to provide notice of NOT agreeing to get into a new contract with someone after an old one terminates. Does your lease actually specify anything other than termination of a renewal is not agreed upon?

And yes, you should fight it and get your deposit back. For sport, profit, and justice.

BTW, why shouldn’t this LL have hit you with a BS collections agency claim? You didn’t put him in his/her place when he/she pulled BS and kept your deposit. When a bully throws a punch, I recommend you punch back.

If "tenant advocates" really wanted to improve lives for tenants, they would demand that people be licensed before renting out apartments as owner or as the property manager. The license could be revoked and fines imposed for not returning security deposits, inserting illegal lease terms, harassment, failure to do repairs, etc. The landlord business is totally unregulated, so they think they can do stuff like keep a security deposit when someone moves out because they didn't provide an unnecessary notice.

I think in NYC there are enough laws on the books to protect renters. Regulation is costly both in terms of compliance and enforcement.

In this case, I am sure the landlord mentioned above can be punished under existing laws. Someone needs to teach this landlord a lesson.

I'm not so sure. I would support tightening regulation of landlords, particularly by requiring licenses, background checks, and barring owners who repeatedly abuse tenants. Slumlords repeatedly reappear, and tenants are too weak to stop them.

NY's laws seem tenant-friendly, but they're not. Strong tenant protections would include universal rent control, guaranteed lease renewals, elimination of all fees (broker, condo board, application, move-in), elimination of concessions (part of universal rent control), elimination of security deposits (replaced with sureties), and a complaint board set-up to adjudicate complaints like that of OP rather than relying on courts.

Landlords and brokers would squawk, and maybe some would exit the business and sell their buildings (most wouldn't), and the whole industry would be much cleaner.

Looks like you want to move to Germany.

Guaranteed lease renewals bwah-ha-ha-ha. Have you ever met a bad tenant?

Indeed Germany has many of the rules I proposed. And average rents in Berlin are 1/3 of those in NYC.

And property taxes in Berlin? Kitchens, interior condition, doorman etc?

I'd much rather have Berlin's housing market in NYC than what we have currently. They have universal rent control (max 10% over 3 years), which could have greatly reduced NYC's run-up in housing prices had it been enacted alongside the rest of rent control. Berlin and Munich have a shortage of housing like every big city, but the costs are a fraction of here, and the regulations strongly protect the tenant. Such regulations have an important feature: they prevent the cost of land from getting out of control. NY is so expensive in part because it costs $1000/buildable foot just to acquire a plot. That cost is an enormous burden placed on the middle class, such that much of Manhattan is a ghetto for rich people. The least we could do would be to enact a robust pied-a-terre tax so that absentee owners pay their fair share. Universal rent control would also help. Landlords who don't like it can sell.

George, You have a choice to make between Germany and your place in Nowhere. Why still in NYC? Not giving you shix. Genuinely curious as you travel for your job good percentage of time anyway.

Guessing Mrs. George's job or her refusal to leave New York which leaves frustrated Mr. George stuck in NYC???

Mrs George is on the fence. She wants to see a competent mayor who will clean-up the streets and put the fear of the law back into the criminal element. Looks like Andrew Yang is leading, and the fact that Stringer and Adams hate him is a good sign in my eyes.

For me it's actually a matter of schools. The good schools in Nowhere filled up quickly in the spring.

But whatever the reason, his heart or his schools, George is here, and he does believe tenants need stronger protections against powerful landlords, for precisely the reasons stated by OP in this thread.

There are two binary potentials for tenants renting in NYC:

- The idealist situation George describes (socialist! communist! bad! Germany!)

- 300_Mercer's deregulated wet dream, where he lets his investment condo you're renting turn into an unmaintained shithole without repercussion. The condo actually has a worse kitchen than the flats in pinko Berlin. 300 will call your personal and professional references mid-lease (he's kept the contact information on file for some reason) to harass them over the phone if you're 36 hours late with the rent, or play music a little too loud in the evenings. Also, you don't get your security deposit back (he needs it to renovate the kitchen).

There is no in between.

George, Thank you for giving insight into why you are in NY. From what you described in the other thread, you Nowhere property seems to be generating yield you are happy with.

IRS, I have no interest in engaging with you as you goal it to pick some type of fight rather than to discuss real estate.

Interesting debate, but it kinda seems predicated on an increase in rents that are not based in reality.

My reality over the past 15 years has been this. I lived in some building in 2006, in some generic 1BR. In 2021, rents there are now 10% lower than they were then. Documented in StreetEasy records. Meanwhile, inflation is up 32%. That means prices then were (inflation-adjusted) 50% higher then that are now!

But that’s just me. Miller Samuel’s reality says pretty much the same thing:

https://www.millersamuel.com/charts/manhattan-quarterly-rental-price-indicators/

Median rents are 10% lower than in 2016.

Seems like a combination of capitalism and policies to allow building have been doing their job.

There are other successful models besides Berlin and...let's call it Arkansas, where falling 1 day behind on rent is a misdemeanor and calling the sheriff to throw them in literal debtor's prison is cheaper than filing for civil eviction.

You've got the Vienna/Singapore approach of massive (>70% population) social housing construction.

There's the Japan approach of deregulating land use at the national level, using value-capture taxes to sink the developers' paper windfall back into social programs and transit.

And in between, there are plenty of world cities with hybrid models comparable to our own which are simply better governed. (I'm voting Stringer)

The difference between Singapore and NYC is very simple: Singapore traded civil liberties for clean and competent government. In NYC, everyone is free to do whatever they want (loot that store, harass that tenant) and government is incompetent and corrupt. Not surprisingly, Singaporean housing estates are not such bad places. Back here in NYC, I don't think Stringer or Yang or any yo-yo will make a difference: we need Bob Moses back.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-08/behind-the-design-of-singapore-s-low-cost-housing

If it was me I would forget the deposit and fight the extra fee.