greenlandlord

I got a call this morning from HPD (housing and preservation department, I think). Now, I think I confused the caller by being so happy to hear from the HPD(I had made friends with this lady named Reva last time I was at the HPD office and overall have a pretty positive expectation of them). But they told me they had received a complaint from an apartment that there was no heat and hot water in the building.

Normally, no heat and hot water in a building in the middle of winter is my worst nightmare, but I was more confused than anything. First of all, the apartment they claimed made the call was the apartment of my superintendent, who calls me directly for all problems that she and my other super (who lives two doors down) can’t handle. Second of all, there was a backed up sewer pipe the night before and I had my plumber/boiler expert there for a couple hours to fix that. I figure if the boiler and the heater were out, he would at least let me know. Third of all, after calling my super and seeing if the heat and hot water had somehow fixed themselves, she told me there was never any problem and the water was “caliente.”

This makes me wonder, does the HPD do any kind of checking to see if prank calls are coming in or if the caller really is a tenant? I have been getting crank calls on my business line (i assume from someone that i evicted 3 months ago, who flushed enough diapers down the drain to cause the sewage problem I was just talking about.)

BTW, if anyone needs a plumber, let me know. I have great faith in Andy, a Polish immigrant who is also taking computer science right now (though frankly, I think you get paid a lot more as a plumber).

So in a previous post, I mentioned that there has was some ridiculousness involved with registering for water and sewer service. Well, I registered two months ago, and never got a bill. Yesterday, however, i got a letter from the DEP saying that I haven’t paid my september water bill, and that late charges will be assessed. What’s worse, the letter has no invoice associated with it, so I still don’t know what the bill is. When I got around to calling them today, they were closed.

Now I have two upcoming projects with water. I have two 50 gallon water heaters in the basement area. I think I can fit heaters up to 75 gallons in there, and would like to, so the tenants will have more hot water available. The question is how to do this to interrupt service as little as possible. The other one is how to find a natural way to heat this water. I am open to suggestions.

oh yeah, and I should probably pay that bill too, as soon as I know how much it is.

So a lot of stuff has happened since I became a landlord, and I want to give kind of a quick run down of what one has to do to get started (a good real estate lawyer should be able to help a lot with this, but I went through two, and still don’t quite feel like i can trust one. There is the possibility that it’s just because I had Brooklyn lawyers, and the gruff nature of Brooklyn courtroom, and therefore lawyers, has made it hard for me to deal with them, but I honestly don’t think so.)

1. Find a building… umm this was a long and complicated experience which involved a lot of personal heartbreak. I would be down with giving tips to anyone who needs help.
2. Close on building - Make sure you have an assignment of rents.
3. Alert tenants of change of ownership in writing. I would say find out as much as possible ahead of time from the current owner, who should write the letter. Have the tenants acknowledge in writing that they have received the notification.
4. Alert the Department of Environmental Protection and sign up for an account for your water and sewage (not that it really matters… more on this ridiculousness in a bit).
5. Register with HPD. Make sure you bring your checkbook, a registration form, your Employer Identification Number (or Social Security number) and a copy of your deed to 100 Gold St. And unlike other government offices, you have to know ahead of time that it closes at 4pm on weekdays. Also, about a week later, you need to come back and get an officially notified copy of this form so you can prove to the court (because let’s face it you will go to court).
6. Here’s a kicker, you have to register with welfare somehow. Now I don’t know how, because after a while, I was eventually contacted by welfare. When in doubt, however, 311 always works for New York. So once you’ve established contact with welfare, you have to fax them a copy of the sale deed as well.
7. Find yourself a Landlord and Tenant Lawyer that you trust and can ask questions of.
8. Fix any violations (there is bureaucratic absurdity involved here too… I promise I will explain more about this soon).
9. Get to know your tenants.

I will update this post as I have time, maybe make a page out of it. Kind of a poor man’s landlording “how-to”