Landlord Rights in New York: What Property Owners Can Still Do in 2026

The narrative around New York landlord rights has become so tenant-focused that many property owners assume they have no rights left at all. That's not accurate. The 2019 HSTPA and the 2024 Good Cause Eviction law significantly restricted what landlords can do, but the framework still includes specific rights, exemptions, and enforcement mechanisms. The key is knowing exactly where the boundaries are.

Your Right to Collect Rent and Enforce Lease Terms

Tenants must pay rent. This hasn't changed. A tenant who fails to pay rent is subject to eviction proceedings, provided the landlord follows the correct procedural sequence: a 5-day late rent notice via certified mail, followed by a 14-day formal rent demand, before filing a non-payment petition in Housing Court.

Under Good Cause Eviction, there's a critical qualifier — the tenant can argue the rent was "unreasonable." But the law defines this precisely: any annual increase exceeding the lower of 10% or 5% plus the Consumer Price Index is presumptively unreasonable. For 2025-2026 in NYC, that ceiling is 8.79%. If your increase was at or below this threshold, a non-payment eviction proceeds normally.

Landlords also retain the right to evict for substantial lease violations — illegal subletting, persistent nuisance behavior, refusal to allow access for necessary repairs, illegal use of the property, or causing significant damage. These grounds apply regardless of Good Cause Eviction protections.

The Small Landlord Exemption

The most important structural protection for individual investors is the Good Cause Eviction small landlord exemption. If you own 10 or fewer residential units across all of New York State, your properties are entirely exempt from Good Cause Eviction restrictions.

This means you retain the traditional right to non-renew leases at expiration, set market-rate rents without the CPI-plus cap, and choose not to renew for any lawful reason — exactly how landlord-tenant relationships worked before April 2024.

The catch is the aggregation rule. If your property is held in an LLC, every natural person behind that LLC has their entire statewide portfolio counted. If you own 6 units personally and your LLC partner owns 5 units through other entities, your combined count is 11 — and you lose the exemption.

To preserve it, landlords claiming the small landlord exemption must proactively attach the disclosure notice specified in RPL 231-C to every lease and court petition. Failing to include this notice can undermine your exemption claim in court.

Owner-Occupant Protections

Owner-occupied buildings with 10 or fewer units are exempt from Good Cause Eviction, providing a separate pathway for investors who house-hack two-to-four family brownstones. Living in one unit while renting the others maintains full landlord autonomy over the rental units — you can set rents at market, choose not to renew, and manage turnover on your terms.

This exemption also applies if you need to recover a unit for personal or immediate family use. Under Good Cause Eviction, reclaiming a unit for owner occupancy is an enumerated statutory ground for eviction, even in covered properties.

Rent Increase Rights by Property Type

Your ability to raise rent depends entirely on the property's regulatory classification:

Market-rate units covered by Good Cause Eviction: Annual increases up to the 5%+CPI ceiling (or 10%, whichever is lower) are presumptively reasonable. You can exceed this threshold if you can document extraordinary property tax increases, structural repair costs, or other legitimate operating expense escalations — but you'll need to justify it in court if challenged.

Market-rate units exempt from Good Cause Eviction (small landlord, owner-occupied, new construction, high-rent): No caps. You can set rents at whatever the market will bear, with the understanding that extreme increases on existing tenants may still invite scrutiny under general unconscionability principles.

Rent-stabilized units: Increases are dictated by the Rent Guidelines Board. You can recoup capital improvements through IAIs (capped at $30,000-$50,000 per 15-year period depending on tier) and MCIs (capped at 2% annual increase, amortizing over 12-12.5 years).

Screening and Selection Rights

Landlords retain the right to screen prospective tenants using credit checks, income verification, and rental history — subject to fair housing laws. The HSTPA capped application fees at $20, but didn't eliminate screening. You cannot charge more than $20 for the application, but you can absolutely require proof of income (typically 40x monthly rent in NYC), contact previous landlords, and check credit reports.

You can also reject applicants based on insufficient income, poor credit, negative landlord references, or incomplete applications. What you cannot do is discriminate based on protected classes (race, religion, gender, national origin, familial status, disability, source of income including Section 8 vouchers in NYC, or lawful occupation).

Enforcement Against Illegal Activity

Landlords have the right — and in some cases the obligation — to take action against illegal activity in their properties. This includes tenant-operated short-term rentals in violation of Local Law 18, illegal subletting, and criminal activity.

For Local Law 18 specifically, landlords should proactively register their buildings on the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) Prohibited Buildings list. This prevents booking platforms from processing short-term rental listings at your address and protects you from DOB violations if a tenant attempts to run an illegal Airbnb operation. Landlords have been fined $2,500+ per violation for tenant-operated illegal STRs, with some receiving $10,000 in penalties from a single enforcement action.

Building a Compliant and Profitable Portfolio

The rules are strict, but they're navigable. Investors who succeed in New York's current regulatory environment do three things: they structure portfolios to maintain exemptions, they follow procedural requirements precisely (14-day deposit returns, proper notice sequences, RPL 231-C disclosures), and they underwrite for worst-case scenarios including 15-month eviction timelines.

The New York Investment Property Guide covers the complete regulatory framework — rent stabilization checks, GCE exemption structuring, Housing Court procedures, and operational compliance checklists — so you can build a portfolio that works within the rules rather than against them.

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