I just got eviction papers for my New York City apartment — what happens in Housing Court, and do I really get a free lawyer?

FIRST RULE: DO NOT DEFAULT. An eviction case cannot be won by ignoring it. If you received a NOTICE OF PETITION and PETITION, the case is in your borough's Housing Court, and you must respond — for nonpayment cases by answering (which can be done in person at the clerk's office), for holdover cases by appearing on the court date. Tenants who show up and get counsel overwhelmingly avoid eviction; tenants who default get warrants issued against them. YES — NEW YORK CITY TENANTS HAVE A RIGHT TO COUNSEL. New York City was the first jurisdiction in the country to guarantee free legal representation to income-qualified tenants facing eviction, and it now covers all five boroughs. At the courthouse, ask court staff about RIGHT TO COUNSEL screening; providers including the Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC take cases directly, and Housing Court Answers staffs information tables for anyone unrepresented. Even if your income is above the guideline, brief advice is usually available. THE PROCEDURAL LADDER PROTECTS YOU. Under the 2019 HOUSING STABILITY AND TENANT PROTECTION ACT, a nonpayment case must be preceded by a 14-DAY WRITTEN RENT DEMAND; holdovers of month-to-month or expiring tenancies require 30, 60, or 90 days' notice depending on how long you have lived there; late fees are capped; and your security deposit cannot exceed one month's rent. Defective notices get cases dismissed, which is one more reason to have a lawyer read the papers. DEFENSES THAT WIN: - WARRANTY OF HABITABILITY under Real Property Law 235-b: no heat, hot water, pests, or leaks can justify rent abatements — document conditions with photos and 311 complaints to HPD - RENT OVERCHARGE: if your building is rent-stabilized, order your free DHCR rent history; an unlawful rent can transform a nonpayment case - IMPROPER NOTICE or defective service of the papers themselves - RETALIATION: an eviction within a year of your complaints is presumed retaliatory - GOOD CAUSE EVICTION: for many market-rate city tenants, the landlord now needs a reason — nonpayment, nuisance, breach — to refuse renewal, and unreasonable rent increases can be challenged MONEY HELP EXISTS. If arrears are the whole problem, ask about a ONE-SHOT DEAL — emergency assistance from the city's Human Resources Administration that can pay back rent — and tell the judge you are applying, because cases are routinely adjourned while funding is processed. Seniors and disabled tenants should also check SCRIE and DRIE eligibility. An eviction judgment hurts for years; the Housing Court machinery exists to prevent one, but only for tenants who walk through the door.

How do I find out if my New York City apartment is rent-stabilized, and what does that status get me?

WHY IT MATTERS. Rent stabilization is the difference between a tenancy that exists at the landlord's pleasure and one with legal armor. A stabilized tenant has the right to RENEWAL LEASES essentially forever, rent increases capped each year by the RENT GUIDELINES BOARD, protection from eviction except on statutory grounds, and SUCCESSION RIGHTS that can pass the apartment to family members who lived there. In the most expensive housing market in the country, that bundle is often worth more than anything else the tenant owns. HOW TO CHECK — IT IS FREE. Order your RENT HISTORY from the state DIVISION OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY RENEWAL (DHCR). The registration history shows every rent the landlord reported for your unit going back decades, whether the unit is or was registered as stabilized, and when and why the landlord claims it left regulation. Rough rules of thumb: buildings of six or more units built before 1974 are presumptively stabilized, and newer buildings that took tax benefits such as 421-a or J-51 are stabilized at least for the benefit period. Do not take the landlord's word or the lease's word for it — mislabeling stabilized units as market-rate was endemic for years. WHAT THE 2019 LAW CHANGED. The HOUSING STABILITY AND TENANT PROTECTION ACT ended the pathways landlords used for decades to deregulate: high-rent vacancy deregulation is gone, vacancy bonuses are gone, and improvements now translate into far smaller, temporary increases. Once stabilized, an apartment now generally stays stabilized. The law also strengthened OVERCHARGE claims, allowing courts to examine rent history beyond the old four-year window where fraud is alleged. IF THE NUMBERS LOOK WRONG: - An overcharge claim can be filed with DHCR or raised in court, including as a defense when a landlord sues for nonpayment - Willful overcharges carry treble damages - Red flags include sudden unexplained jumps in the registration history, a unit claimed as deregulated during years the building took tax benefits, and gaps where no registration was filed at all AND IF YOU ARE NOT STABILIZED. Market-rate city tenants are no longer unprotected: GOOD CAUSE EVICTION applies inside New York City as of early 2026, requiring landlords of covered units to justify non-renewals and defend unreasonable rent increases, with exemptions for small landlords, newer buildings, and very high-rent units. Between stabilization, Good Cause, the warranty of habitability, and the Right to Counsel, the city tenant who knows which regime covers the apartment holds real cards — and the DHCR rent history is where the answer starts.

What legal traps should I watch for when buying a co-op or condo in New York City?

KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY BUYING. Most city apartments are not real property in the traditional sense. In a CO-OP — still the majority of the city's owned apartments — you buy SHARES in a corporation plus a PROPRIETARY LEASE for your unit; in a CONDOMINIUM you own the unit itself as real property. That distinction drives everything: financing, board power, taxes at closing, and what happens if things go wrong. THE BOARD IS THE GATEKEEPER. Co-op BOARD APPROVAL is a genuine contingency — boards interview buyers, demand exhaustive financial disclosure, routinely require debt-to-income ratios and post-closing liquidity far stricter than any bank, and may reject without stating a reason, a power courts protect under the BUSINESS JUDGMENT RULE of Levandusky v. One Fifth Avenue so long as no unlawful discrimination (race, national origin, source of income, and the other protected categories of the NYC Human Rights Law) is involved. Condo boards hold only a waivable right of first refusal, which is why condos command premium prices and dominate foreign and investor purchases. DUE DILIGENCE IS YOUR LAWYER'S JOB — HIRE ONE EARLY. New York closings are attorney-driven by longstanding custom. Before you sign the contract, counsel should read: - Two years of BOARD MINUTES, where assessments, litigation, leaks, and noise wars live - The building's financial statements and the offering plan and amendments - The alteration and sublet policies - For condos, title insurance and a lien search; for new development, the sponsor's plan and the tax-abatement schedule Ask specifically about the FLIP TAX — a transfer fee many co-ops charge on resale — and any looming capital assessments or Local Law 11 facade work. CLOSING COSTS ARE THEIR OWN LINE ITEM. Budget for the state and city REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER TAXES, and above 1 million dollars the tiered MANSION TAX, which starts at 1 percent and rises in steps to 3.9 percent above 25 million on city purchases. On new construction, sponsors often push their transfer taxes onto buyers — negotiable in softer markets. Financing a co-op means a share loan rather than a classic mortgage, and a default risks a UCC ARTICLE 9 sale of the shares, a faster and less protective process than judicial foreclosure, though a ninety-day pre-sale notice is now required. AFTER CLOSING, DISPUTES HAVE A TILTED PLAYING FIELD. Board decisions get business-judgment deference, so the time to protect yourself is before purchase, not in litigation afterward. Verify everything in writing, never waive the attorney-review protections standard in city deals, and treat any pressure to sign quickly — in the priciest market in America — as a reason to slow down.

I am behind on my mortgage on a New York City condo or co-op — how does foreclosure work here?

NEW YORK IS A JUDICIAL FORECLOSURE STATE — TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE IF YOU USE IT. A lender cannot simply sell your home. It must sue you in the borough SUPREME COURT, serve you with a summons and complaint, and prove its case. Contested New York foreclosures routinely take years, and every stage offers an exit: - Reinstatement by curing the arrears, or a refinance - A loan modification negotiated at the mandatory settlement conference - A short sale or a sale with enough equity to pay the debt - A defense on the merits — a defective 1304 notice, standing problems, or a lender that cannot prove the chain The catastrophic mistake is defaulting — an unanswered complaint waives defenses that might have won the case. THE 90-DAY NOTICE IS A REAL DEFENSE. Before filing, the lender must serve the RPAPL 1304 pre-foreclosure notice at least ninety days ahead, in the statutorily prescribed form and type size, with the required list of housing-counseling agencies, by both regular and certified mail. Defects in the 1304 notice — wrong form, wrong mailing, missing contents — continue to win dismissals in New York courts. Never assume the paperwork was done right; make the lender prove it. THE MANDATORY SETTLEMENT CONFERENCE. In residential cases the court must hold a SETTLEMENT CONFERENCE early in the action, where the lender must appear with authority to negotiate and both sides must deal in good faith. This is where loan modifications actually happen. Appear even without a lawyer — the conference part is built for unrepresented homeowners, free housing-counseling and legal-services programs work alongside it, and lenders who negotiate in bad faith face sanctions. THE CO-OP DIFFERENCE — FASTER AND MORE DANGEROUS. If you own co-op shares rather than a condo, your lender holds a security interest in personal property, so default triggers a UCC ARTICLE 9 non-judicial sale of your shares instead of a court foreclosure — historically a matter of months, not years. State law now requires a ninety-day pre-sale notice for residential co-op loans, echoing the mortgage rule, but there is still no judge unless you bring the fight to court yourself, so co-op owners in default should get counsel immediately. Separately, the co-op corporation can pursue unpaid maintenance, and condo boards can foreclose common-charge liens. EQUITY IS PROTECTED NOW — EVEN IN TAX CASES. After the U.S. Supreme Court's Tyler v. Hennepin decision, New York reformed its tax-enforcement laws: a government that takes property for unpaid taxes must return the SURPLUS EQUITY above the debt. In a city where even modest units carry enormous equity, that principle — and the surplus-money proceeding after any foreclosure sale — means the debt, not the property's whole value, is what you owe. Watch for surplus-recovery scams, verify any helper's credentials, and remember the free path: the court-connected conference, nonprofit counsel, and the time judicial process gives you.

Someone recorded a fake deed on my family's brownstone — what is deed theft, and what should I do right now?

WHY THE CITY IS TARGETED. DEED THEFT — stealing a home by forging a deed or deceiving an owner into signing one — concentrates exactly where the city's generational wealth does: the brownstones and row houses of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Harlem, southeast Queens, and the Bronx, often owned outright for decades, frequently entangled in unsettled estates, occupied by elderly owners, and worth seven figures. Thieves forge signatures, pose as helpers offering foreclosure rescue or tax assistance, buy fractional heirs' interests to force a partition, or slip a deed into a stack of refinance papers. Once a fraudulent deed is recorded, the thief can borrow against the property or flip it to a buyer, and untangling the chain takes litigation. IT IS NOW A CRIME — AND PROSECUTORS HAVE NEW TOOLS. New York criminalized deed theft in 2023, giving the ATTORNEY GENERAL and district attorneys explicit authority to prosecute fraudulent transfers and to intervene in related proceedings while fraud is investigated. The borough District Attorney and the Attorney General's office both take these cases, and reporting quickly matters because criminal process can freeze what civil litigation only slowly unwinds. WHAT TO DO IMMEDIATELY: - Pull the property's records on ACRIS (or, for Staten Island, the Richmond County Clerk) and print every recorded document — deed, mortgages, powers of attorney — with recording dates - Report to the NYPD, the borough DA, and the Attorney General; bring the printouts and any papers you were asked to sign - Retain counsel and file a QUIET TITLE action (RPAPL Article 15) in Supreme Court, with a NOTICE OF PENDENCY so the property cannot be sold or mortgaged to an unsuspecting buyer while the case runs - Notify any lender and title company involved; a forged deed is void and passes nothing, even to a later good-faith buyer, though litigation is usually required to establish that - If the scheme grew out of a foreclosure-rescue pitch, gather every contract and payment record; those arrangements are separately regulated and often voidable PREVENTION FOR EVERY OWNER. Enroll in the City Register's free notification program so any document recorded against your property triggers an alert — the single cheapest early-warning system that exists. Families holding property through inheritance should clear title now: probate the estate at the borough SURROGATE'S COURT, deed the property properly among heirs, and never leave ownership resting on an unadministered estate, because HEIRS' PROPERTY — houses owned informally by many relatives — is precisely what partition-abuse and deed-theft operations hunt. Treat any stranger offering to save the house — for a fee, a signature, or a partial interest — as a five-alarm warning.

Real Estate Law in New York, New York

New York City is the most expensive and most heavily litigated real estate market in the country, and its disputes are handled borough by borough. Landlord-tenant cases fill the HOUSING COURT — part of the NYC Civil Court — in each borough, all of which now offer income-eligible tenants a RIGHT TO COUNSEL; the same Civil Court hears general claims to 50,000 dollars and small claims to 10,000. Foreclosures, title fights, partition actions, and co-op and condominium litigation proceed in the SUPREME COURT of the borough, and property passing through estates — a constant source of heirs' disputes in the city's brownstone and row-house neighborhoods — runs through the borough SURROGATE'S COURT. Deeds and mortgages for Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens are recorded with the City Register through the online ACRIS system, which any owner can search for free; Staten Island deeds are recorded with the RICHMOND COUNTY CLERK. From rent-stabilized walk-ups in the Bronx and Bushwick to co-op towers on Central Park West and waterfront condos in Long Island City and DUMBO, nearly every housing transaction and dispute in the five boroughs passes through one of these forums.

The state framework starts with the HOUSING STABILITY AND TENANT PROTECTION ACT OF 2019, which rewrote residential landlord-tenant law statewide: security deposits are capped at ONE MONTH'S RENT, nonpayment cases require a 14-DAY WRITTEN RENT DEMAND, month-to-month and expiring tenancies get 30, 60, or 90 days' notice depending on length of occupancy, late fees are capped, and retaliation against complaining tenants is presumed if an eviction follows within a year. Every residential lease carries the non-waivable WARRANTY OF HABITABILITY under REAL PROPERTY LAW 235-B — heat, hot water, and safe conditions are conditions of paying rent, not favors. On the ownership side, New York is a JUDICIAL FORECLOSURE state: a lender must sue in Supreme Court, must first serve the RPAPL 1304 ninety-day pre-foreclosure notice — whose defects continue to win dismissals — and must appear at a MANDATORY SETTLEMENT CONFERENCE where loan modification is explored before litigation proceeds. DEED THEFT was made a crime in 2023, with prosecutors empowered to intervene in related proceedings; SOURCE-OF-INCOME discrimination — refusing vouchers such as Section 8 or CityFHEPS — is illegal statewide; and after the Supreme Court's Tyler v. Hennepin decision, New York reformed tax enforcement so governments must return surplus equity above the tax debt rather than keeping the windfall.

New York City then layers on the strongest tenant infrastructure in America. The city holds rent regulation at massive scale: hundreds of thousands of RENT-STABILIZED apartments across the boroughs whose renewal increases are set annually by the RENT GUIDELINES BOARD, whose registration histories live at the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), and whose tenants hold renewal and succession rights that survive building sales and, since 2019, can no longer be deregulated at high rents. Tenants facing eviction in Housing Court have a RIGHT TO COUNSEL — New York City was the first jurisdiction in the nation to guarantee free lawyers to income-qualified tenants. Housing Court is not only defensive: tenants can bring HP ACTIONS to force repairs, heat, and lead-paint remediation, and the city's TENANT HARASSMENT laws — including rules regulating buyout offers in gentrifying neighborhoods — carry civil penalties. GOOD CAUSE EVICTION applies inside the city, giving many market-rate tenants a defense against arbitrary non-renewal and unreasonable rent hikes, subject to exemptions for small portfolios, newer construction, and very high-rent units. Seniors and disabled tenants can freeze their rent through the SCRIE and DRIE programs (the Senior Citizen and Disability Rent Increase Exemptions). The LOFT LAW still governs legacy live-work conversions, MITCHELL-LAMA developments provide middle-income housing with their own rules, and NYCHA public housing operates under federal rules with its own grievance procedures.

Ownership in the city has a grammar of its own. Co-ops and condominiums dominate — in a co-op the buyer purchases SHARES and a PROPRIETARY LEASE rather than real property, which means BOARD APPROVAL can sink a deal without stated reasons (so long as no unlawful discrimination is involved), FLIP TAXES skim resales, and board decisions enjoy the deference of the BUSINESS JUDGMENT RULE announced in Levandusky v. One Fifth Avenue. Closings are attorney-driven by custom: contracts are negotiated by counsel, due diligence means reading board minutes and building financials, and closing costs include the state and city REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER TAXES and the tiered MANSION TAX, which starts at 1 percent at 1 million dollars and climbs to 3.9 percent above 25 million on New York City purchases. Because co-op shares are personal property, a defaulting co-op borrower faces a UCC ARTICLE 9 sale rather than a judicial foreclosure — faster and less protective, though state law now requires a ninety-day pre-sale notice. Condominium and co-op OFFERING PLANS are reviewed by the New York Attorney General under the MARTIN ACT, and construction-defect battles between new-building boards and their sponsors fill the Supreme Court calendars. Meanwhile the city's generational wealth is under attack from DEED THEFT — forged or deceptively obtained transfers targeting brownstones and row houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem, southeast Queens, and the Bronx, and elderly or estate-entangled owners — and the NYC Human Rights Law adds protections the state lacks, including the FAIR CHANCE FOR HOUSING ACT, which limits criminal-history screening by landlords and brokers.

Help in the city is unusually concrete. Tenants sued in Housing Court should appear on the return date and ask for RIGHT TO COUNSEL screening — providers such as the Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC staff the courthouses, and Housing Court Answers runs information tables for the unrepresented; emergency rent arrears can sometimes be covered through a ONE-SHOT DEAL from the city's Human Resources Administration. Rent-stabilized tenants should order their DHCR rent history — free, and the foundation of any overcharge claim — and eligible seniors and disabled tenants should apply for SCRIE or DRIE before increases pile up. Homeowners in foreclosure should never ignore the RPAPL 1304 notice, should appear at the settlement conference even without a lawyer, and can find free counsel through court-connected housing-counseling programs. Every owner should enroll in the City Register's free notification program so that any document recorded against their property in ACRIS triggers an alert — the single cheapest defense against deed theft — and suspected fraud belongs simultaneously with the New York Attorney General, the borough District Attorney, and a civil quiet-title action in Supreme Court. Buyers should retain a New York real estate attorney before signing anything, and estate heirs should move promptly in Surrogate's Court, because unresolved heirs' property is exactly what deed thieves hunt.

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