Do I need to help the agent selling my rental?

Last week I had to do extra chores to impress someone who might kick me out of my home. 

I’ve recently entered a super fun bit of housing limbo: A few months back, my neighbors and I got one of the many real-estate related notices that can have any renter’s hearts sink all the way down to their sometimes-flooded basement: our landlord is selling the building. 

This could mean a spectrum of things but one of the very real options is having to move, and boy, I don’t want to move. I never want to move because moving is expensive, but also because I read and hear stories about people finding housing in the city and it sounds about as fun as dating in the city right now, two things I haven't done since the 2010s, when they were more fun, less expensive and didn't involve quite as many apps. 

But news of the building being sold is not inherently good or evil. It can be both at the same time, impossible to know the effects of the outcome until it has already happened, like Schrodinger’s walkup. A new landlord could mean we’d get kicked out for someone else to move in, or for the whole building to get turned into another outpost of America’s fastest growing chain, Tribeca Pediatrics. Or it could actually benefit us: if someone who buys the building already owns a few more units, we could qualify for newly enacted Good Cause Eviction and be in a much better position. Nonetheless, it’s a stressful time! 

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All that is in the future. For now, real estate agents are coming by to show the building and that means people coming through the house and that means chores: cleaning, tidying, taking the compost out, scooping the cat box; we take pride in being good hosts and a guest is a guest, after all. 

But is it, one can’t help wondering, digging our own grave to make our place look as nice as we think it actually is? 

We don’t own the space — buying a place is very far away, thanks Eric Adams — but have lived here a long time; my girlfriend put in 10 years before I moved in. That’s a lot of paint and old-growth house plants, accumulated detritus of many silly parties and lots of cozy soft surfaces hauled up narrow flights of stairs on hot summer days; not to mention all the maintenance and unbilled labor just keeping the place together and the toilet flowing. I would want to buy this building if I saw this space.

Yet, my other instinct is not to impress the potential buyers but rather to set up a series of hilarious, Home Alone-style pranks up and down the staircase, to deter them, or perhaps look on Craigslist for a Betelgeuse-type character for hire.

I wanted to know for sure what to do here so I reached out to a lawyer friend who works in tenants rights to ask: is there any benefit to trying to curry favor with a potential new landlord? 

He responded that this is a good question, but more of a strategic question than a legal one. Your legal rights in regards to the apartment are determined by other things: whether you are covered by rent stabilization or Good Cause Eviction, but determining what level of charm to turn on is up to you. 

You certainly cannot prevent a prospective buyer from coming inside. Renters are always required to show the apartment to prospective tenants or purchasers, said Allia Mohamed, the founder of Open Igloo, which allows users to rate buildings and landlords and provides other renter resources. Those visits should have “reasonable” notice — about 24 hours is the standard time frame, Mohamed said. 

“I would recommend that renters double check their lease to what their responsibilities are and to make sure they aren't inadvertently breaking any terms of their lease,” she said. 

Breaking that clause — e.g. messing with the buyers by, say, putting Micro Machines all over the floor or creating elaborate cocktail-shrimp-centric choreography — could put you in jeopardy, and could hurt your chances at a lease renewal, especially in a stabilized unit or one that qualifies for Good Cause Eviction, she said.

But how helpful do you have to be? 

“The agreement probably wouldn't stipulate that you have to be friendly, but you shouldn't do anything to jeopardize a sale,” she said. “You could get yourself into legal trouble.”

My building is not stabilized or eligible for Good Cause Eviction; Mohamed points out that if you are in one of those two situations, a new owner isn’t going to affect your tenancy rights. So, obviously, the best solution is to have yourself a unit that has built-in tenant protections. Then the No. 1 rule of New York City real estate still stands: if you got a good deal, hold on to it. 

“Our advice to renters is to prioritize finding an apartment that has these protections to avoid these types of situations,” she said. 

She covered more things to know about what to do as a renter when your building gets sold in a recent TikTok as well: 

As she notes in the video, “your life is in limbo if you do not have rent stabilization or good cause.” 

That means that for now I’ll stay in spooky limbo, strategically shopping for which prospective buyer we want to impress the most vs. which seems the most likely to convert the building to top-quality pediatric care. We’ll probably keep doing chores either way. As for fantasies of Home Alone booby traps, my lawyer friend had bad news: 

“That sounds very fun,” he said, “but legally I would have to advise against it.”

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