Yelp For Landlords: New Site Brings Transparency To NYC Real Estate

BEDFORD STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Finally, there’s a Yelp for landlords.

A pair of Bed-Stuy residents have launched a new website called Whose Your Landlord — creative grammar intentional — where New Yorkers can learn more about their landlords’ reputations before signing a lease.

Creators Ofo Ezeugwu and Felix Addison were inspired to create the site while at Temple University in Philadelphia, where they saw landlords preying upon the innocence of students, Curbed NY reports.

“For bad landlords, there should be a naming and shaming,” Ezeugwu told Curbed NY. “If you’re a bad landlord, people should know that.”

The site, which lists realty companies in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey alongside tenants reviews, has attracted about 250,000 active users, according to Curbed NY.

The reviews can be eye-popping.

"Worst thing: Throwing out tons of furniture we purchased with our hard earned money because the bedbug situation wasn't handled correctly," one reviewer wrote of Beach Lane Management in Brooklyn. "Best thing: Sleeping in trash bags on my living room floor for 3 months."

"They treat their tenants with pure disrespect, wrote anApt212 reviewer, whose complaints included a lack of heat, two serious gas leaks, a mice infestation and flickering electricity. "It's really sad."

And yet another reviewer listed the dangerous problems in a building owned by Waterfront Property Management:

"[There are] walls that have no insulation and are covered with mold, rats, a garbage room where garbage piles up to the size of a small mountain taller than a person, broken elevator, destruction of a large beautiful community roof garden, illegal carbon monoxide spewing heaters."

The site fights what can be a frustrating lack of transparency in New York City’s real estate market — where landlords hide behind LLCs and have avoided paying up to $500 million in fines for regularly breaking city codes — by giving tenants a stronger voice, one user told Curbed NY.

“I think a lot of landlords and slumlords get away with providing bad living standards because renters aren’t avoiding them,” Monteka Maddox said.

“But if you go to a restaurant, and see it only has two stars, that’s on you… but at least you were warned.”

Read the full interview with Ofo Ezeugwu and Felix Addison on CurbedNY here and check out their website here.

Header photo courtesy of Anthony Quintano/Flickr