So, you live in a New York City apartment building and you have a problem in your apartment (or building), what do you do?

Of course, it may depend on whether you live in a rental building, a cooperative or condominium, or live in a sponsor unit. In some cases and depending on the issue at hand, a call to the super or the property management firm, or the sponsor should suffice.

However, some residents don’t know who to call, so they call 311. There, you’ll be connected to a New York City building regulations entity called NYC Housing Preservation & Development, commonly known as just HPD. Here you can report everything from no heat, no hot water, battery is out in my smoke detector, lightbulb in kitchen ceiling is burnt out, clogged toilet, or a much larger problem.

Having outstanding HPD violations could indicate that the condo or coop board is not proactive and not addressing the violations. It would also mean that the coop or condo board thinks that they have solved the violations because they instructed the property management firm to resolve them.

To find your building’s outstanding HPD violations, here’s the link.

Some side effects of unresolved outstanding violations:

1. Reduce the chance of insurance carriers’ willingness to insure the property

2. Higher insurance premiums

3. Less chance of banks extending financing for owners or shareholders in the form of mortgages or refinancing, or doing so at a higher interest rate

4. Reflects poorly on management so buyer’s attorneys might advise against buying in the building, which may negatively affect sales prices

Today, most buildings have a building management and communication portal such as BuildingLink. These types of portals are great for both coop and condo boards and management communicating with residents, as well as residents reciprocating and entering their maintenance requests. In addition, when coop and condo boards keep an open dialog with owners and residents, including sponsor renters, prompting them to report issues directly on this portal instead of to 311, everyone benefits.  

Since many future complaints will be handled internally on a building portal, this is a perfect opportunity to clean out the outstanding HPD violations once and for all.

We asked Jimmy Gandhi, founder and owner of Nexus Consulting NYC how to remove HPD violations, and here’s what he said:

 “You cannot schedule an inspection to remove only some of the violations. The inspection has to be scheduled to remove all of the violations at once. At the inspection, the inspector will inspect each violating condition and remove or retain the violation based on what they observe.”

If you have violations from 1990 either the inspection was never scheduled, or the violation was not corrected to the inspector’s satisfaction during the inspection.

Nexus Consulting is a building code and zoning consulting company with expertise in helping their clients comply with New York City building regulations.

This article was inspired by a conversation with Isaac Schwadel, commercial insurance advisor with Allsure Insurance Brokerage.

To remove HPD violations, here are the steps:

1. To schedule an appointment for an HPD inspector to come out and remove all your outstanding violations, call HPD at (212) 862-6300. Typical appointments are 6 weeks from when booking them

2. Pay the fee, currently $300

3. Have the super or handyman, or both, available with tools during the inspection. This way, if the inspector is not satisfied with any cures, the super can correct them at the spot to the inspector’s satisfaction.

For other best practices for co-op and condo boards, get our FREE Policies and Procedures Checklist emailed straight to your inbox. At The Folson Group, our goal is to inspire you to run your building like a business. We enable and inspire co-op or condo board engagements to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment, excitement, meaning, happiness, and increased probability of success.

Email us at info@thefolsongroup.com or call us at (917) 648-8154 to see how we can help your co-op or condo board today.