The Public Advocate's Worst Landlord Watchlist gets the headlines. It counts one agency's violations and weights building size, so a landlord holding hundreds of buildings and thousands of open violations can miss it entirely.
We did something simpler: ranked every landlord portfolio in our database by raw open violations across the housing and buildings departments. A leak, a broken lock, no heat — each one counts once, in a walk-up or a tower. We count only buildings where a deed or the owner's city registration ties them to the landlord, and when a person and their company share the same buildings, we count them once, as one portfolio.
- A&E Real Estate Holdings225 buildings16,950
- Camber Property Group (incl. Rick Gropper)66 buildings7,565
- FINE (incl. Peter Fine)70 buildings6,965
- Summit Properties USA79 buildings6,601
- DeMatteis Organization3 buildings5,176
- Cafiero191 buildings4,510
- Residential Management (NY)89 buildings4,124
- Kew Gardens Hills LLC12 buildings3,703
- Pistilli Realty Group54 buildings3,491
- Moshe Piller108 buildings3,442
A&E Real Estate Holdings
- open violations
- 16,950 open violations
- buildings
- 225 Totalbuildings
A&E isn't just at the top of this list — they're in a category of their own, with more than double the open violations of anyone else here. The city's $2.1 million settlement in January covered 14 of their 225 buildings, which leaves the rest — and thousands of tenants — outside the deal. Here's what active housing filings show for every building in that settlement.
Camber Property Group (incl. Rick Gropper)
- open violations
- 7,565 open violations
- buildings
- 66 Totalbuildings
Camber and Rick Gropper appear on almost exactly the same buildings, so we count them as one portfolio. Camber specializes in affordable-housing portfolios, which means the tenants living with those violations are the ones with the fewest alternatives.
FINE (incl. Peter Fine)
- open violations
- 6,965 open violations
- buildings
- 70 Totalbuildings
FINE and Peter Fine share most of their buildings, so we count them once. New to our top ten after the October recount, and on the city's watchlist.
Summit Properties USA
- open violations
- 6,601 open violations
- buildings
- 79 Totalbuildings
The highest-ranked portfolio that the city's watchlist misses entirely. Summit is the first of three landlords in our top ten that the official list doesn't name.
DeMatteis Organization
- open violations
- 5,176 open violations
- buildings
- 3 Totalbuildings
Three buildings. Nobody else on this list is close on density.
And it's mostly one building. 725 Lincoln Avenue, a sprawling Brooklyn complex, carries the bulk of the portfolio's open violations on its own. For the people living there, this isn't a portfolio statistic. It's the apartment. We wrote up the full record for that building.
Cafiero
- open violations
- 4,510 open violations
- buildings
- 191 Totalbuildings
The largest building count in the top ten after A&E. On the city's watchlist.
Residential Management (NY) Inc
- open violations
- 4,124 open violations
- buildings
- 89 Totalbuildings
On the city's watchlist — one of seven in our top ten that are.
Kew Gardens Hills LLC
- open violations
- 3,703 open violations
- buildings
- 12 Totalbuildings
Twelve buildings and thousands of open violations, and invisible to the official list. The second of three landlords here the watchlist misses.
Pistilli Realty Group
- open violations
- 3,491 open violations
- buildings
- 54 Totalbuildings
On the city's watchlist.
Moshe Piller
- open violations
- 3,442 open violations
- buildings
- 108 Totalbuildings
Like Summit and Kew Gardens Hills, nowhere on the official list. Tenth place is close: the next portfolio down is only a few dozen violations behind.
Who left the list, and why
The August version of this ranking included Stellar Management, Progressive Management of NY, M&T Real Estate and Alma Realty. In October we removed company links that had no deed or registration proving ownership, and recounted every portfolio on the corrected lists. Stellar now carries 3,009 open violations across 144 confirmed buildings, and Progressive 3,328 across 65. Both fall outside the top ten. See the correction note below.
What this list tells us
Size doesn't equal severity. Cafiero has 191 buildings. DeMatteis has three. They're on the same list. Portfolio scale tells you nothing about what it's like to live in any one of the buildings.
Density is the lived experience. Tenants don't experience the portfolio average — they experience their building. Always look at your building's own number, not just the total.
The official list misses three of the ten. Summit, Kew Gardens Hills and Piller appear on no official watchlist. We found 43 portfolios citywide carrying heavy violation loads the city never named.
One building can carry an entire portfolio. Most of DeMatteis's open violations sit at a single Brooklyn address. Averages don't just hide bad buildings — they can hide a catastrophe.
Your landlord isn't "123 Main St LLC." It's a name on a list like this one — and the entity on your lease usually isn't the one that owns the building.
Check whether your landlord is on a list like this
Type a landlord name to see their full portfolio, or an address to see who actually owns it.
If you'd rather start from the building, the violations lookup opens on the same record from the other side.
