New 'Speculation Watch List' Aims To Put Bad Landlords On Notice

NEW YORK — Landlords plotting to push tenants out of a recently purchased building may find themselves on a new list city officials announced Tuesday. The recently released Speculation Watch List aims to put a spotlight on recently sold rent-regulated properties where residents could be at risk of harassment by unscrupulous buyers.

"Of all forms of affordable housing, rent-regulated housing is the most vulnerable," said City Councilman Ritchie Torres, who sponsored the legislation that created the list. "So the question I have is: Which buildings have been taken over by speculative investment? Where do tenants face the greatest risk of displacement and harassment? We know now the answer to those questions because of the speculation watchlist."

Under the law signed earlier this year, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development will release a list of at-risk properties each quarter based on their "capitalization rate," or their net operating income divided by their sales prices.

The department said it looks for rent-regulated properties that sell for unusually high prices, a possible sign that the new landlord will raise rents, cut services or otherwise try to to push tenants out. Those that make the list have lower capitalization rates than the average for their borough, the department said.

The inaugural list covering the second quarter of this year includes 51 buildings in four boroughs. Manhattan has the most with 18, including properties in Harlem, Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side.

Brooklyn comes in second with 17 properties in neighborhoods such as Crown Heights, Gowanus and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. Queens has 10 properties on the list, while The Bronx has six.

HPD has also released a broader list of every rent-regulated building sold in the same three-month period "to allow for additional analysis of data that has not been publicly available previously," the department said.

Housing advocates praised the list as a tool that they and the city can use in the fight against predatory equity landlords, who hurt tenants and damage their communities.

"By tracking trends in sales prices and capitalization rates, organizers and advocates will be able to target outreach efforts in buildings where potentially speculative purchases have been made," Samantha Kattan, the co-director of organizing and policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, said in a statement.

(Lead image: A for-sale sign hangs outside a Brooklyn home in 2012. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)