IN RE: Meirav GAVRIELOV (2019)

The parties do not dispute that before 2014 the apartment that had been occupied by respondent Harold Unger for several decades was subject to rent stabilization.  Rent stabilized renewal leases were executed by Unger from at least 1989 until January 31, 2008, listing as the tenant a corporate entity wholly owned by Unger.  In 2008, Unger himself was added as a tenant to the lease renewal.  However, in 2014, Unger executed a rent stabilized lease renewal designating respondent Unger Corporate Group (UCG), another corporate entity wholly owned by him, as the tenant.  The lease renewal did not identify any occupant of the apartment.

By omitting Unger as a named tenant and adding UCG, respondents created a vacancy and a new tenancy, which resulted in the deregulation of the apartment, because the rent exceeded the deregulation threshold (see Fox v. 12 E.88th LLC, 160 A.D.3d 401, 74 N.Y.S.3d 29 [1st Dept. 2018], lv denied 32 N.Y.3d 911, 2018 WL 6542029 [2018] ).

Respondents failed to present evidence that, by accepting Unger's personal checks for the rent and offering the lease renewal on the form used by the Division of Housing and Community Renewal for rent stabilized apartments, petitioners or the predecessor landlord voluntarily waived a known right to deregulate the apartment based on the vacancy (see Sullivan v. Brevard Assoc., 66 N.Y.2d 489, 495, 498 N.Y.S.2d 96, 488 N.E.2d 1208 [1985] ).