Only in NYC

The record's stranger findings

The Record

New York City Edition 23 Stories

Weathered brick tenement buildings on a Mott Haven street in the Bronx — the kind of rent-stabilized walk-ups dominated by New York's worst-ranked landlords.

Worst Landlords

The 10 Worst Landlords in NYC Right Now

We ranked every NYC landlord portfolio by open violations on the city record. These ten are the worst — and four of them appear on no official watchlist.

The brick towers of Linden Plaza in East New York, Brooklyn, rising above street trees at a traffic light.

Worst Landlords

One Brooklyn Address Accounts for 95% of This Landlord's Open Violations

The DeMatteis Organization built Battery Park City's first apartments. Three buildings remain in its portfolio — and one address in East New York carries nearly all {{claim:dematteis-open-violations}} of its open violations.

Rows of prewar apartment houses along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx at dusk, with the Manhattan skyline behind them.

Rent Stabilization

All 761 Apartments Here Are Rent-Stabilized. Tenants Say They Were Overcharged Anyway.

Most apartments that stopped being rent-stabilized left for a boring, lawful reason: a tax break expired. Which is why nobody notices the other kind — buildings where tenants say apartments were deregulated when they shouldn't have been, one or two a year, for a decade.

Entrance of a prewar apartment building on 35th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Tenant Rights

9 Things I Check on a Landlord Before I Sign Anything

I've had four landlords in this city. Two were fine. One took nine months to fix a radiator. One I'm still not sure was the actual owner. Here's the order I read the public record in now.

A residential street in Greenwich Village at night, stoop lights on and windows lit above the sidewalk.

Data & Policy

New York Complains on a Schedule. Here's the Clock.

We put 3,917,827 complaints from the city's complaint record on a 24-hour dial. Every category keeps its own hour — and the hours say more about how New Yorkers live than the counts ever do. Commercial noise peaks at 10pm. Heat peaks at 9am, which is the strangest number in the whole file.

New York City apartment buildings along a tree-lined street with window air conditioners and traffic.

Tenant Rights

12 Things I Learned After 14 Apartments in NYC

After 14 apartments, I learned that a 20-minute showing can hide a weak shower, a noisy bedroom, dead outlets, and a sofa that can't make it past the elevator.

A rooster mid-crow — the 311 call that stopped us.

Weird But True

What New Yorkers Called 311 About This Summer

A rooster in Queens. A wildlife sighting across from the Central Park wall. Bees on Prospect Place, again. Eighty-two illegal-fireworks calls in sixty days. The last three months of New York, in the words of the people who picked up the phone.

East Harlem streetscape near 125th Street and 2nd Avenue

Data & Policy

What the city is asking developers to build next to — E 125th & 2nd Ave by the numbers

The Mamdani administration just opened bids on a 140-unit affordable project at 2453 2nd Avenue. Within 250 meters: 40 buildings, 75 open HPD violations, 2 in AEP, and 299 rodent 311 calls in the last year.

Richman Plaza, a large Bronx residential high-rise at dusk with scattered lit windows

Data & Policy

Every Nine Hours, New York Quietly Tells Another Household to Get Out

NYC issued 255 vacate orders in the last 90 days — one every nine hours. 788 units displaced. 4,419 active orders the city has declared unsafe and never marked fixed. And one Bronx complex has had 19 fire-driven partial unit vacates since 2013.

Editorial illustration of a vintage rotary phone with a monkey, rooster, snake, pigeon, helicopter, and firework swirling out of the receiver

Weird But True

The 10 Wildest 311 Complaints New Yorkers Have Actually Filed

22 calls about a monkey. 49 about a snake in someone's apartment. 604 about roosters. 93,740 about helicopters. A decade of New York dialing 311 to report things that, somewhere else, would be a hallucination.

Editorial illustration of a single helicopter over the Manhattan skyline at dusk with sound waves rippling across the rooftops

Data & Policy

The NYC Noise Complaint That Grew 460% in Three Years

In 2020, New Yorkers filed 5,641 311 complaints about helicopter noise. In 2023, they filed 31,567. Nobody voted on this. The helicopters just got louder, and one borough is bearing almost all of it.

The $95 Million Apartment With a Trash Chute That "Sounds Like a Bomb"

Data & Policy

The $95 Million Apartment With a Trash Chute That "Sounds Like a Bomb"

432 Park Avenue scores in the B range on Brix. Zero open HPD violations, zero open DOB violations. The condo board is suing the developers for $125 million over 1,500 construction defects. Both things are true at the same time — and the gap is the story.

A row of brownstones in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a neighborhood where deed theft complaints are concentrated.

Tenant Rights

7 Signs Someone Is Trying to Take Your Home

Deed theft complaints to the state tripled in two years. The crime is a forged signature, a notary stamp, and a filing nobody verifies. Here are the seven things we look for in the record, and what to do about each one.

The TikTok That Got Her $6,000 Back

Tenant Rights

The TikTok That Got Her $6,000 Back

A New York renter posted a TikTok in 2024 about getting $6,000 back from her landlord. It went viral because almost nobody knew you could do what she did. Here's what happened — and what it means for the million New Yorkers in rent-stabilized apartments.

A fancy UWS co-op said no, so Mariah Carey bought a condo. And it's still not in her name.

Celebrity

A fancy UWS co-op said no, so Mariah Carey bought a condo. And it's still not in her name.

Mariah Carey has lived at 90 Franklin Street for 26 years. The deed says Franklin Views, LLC. Here is the full chain — every deed, mortgage, and consolidation — in the public record.

30 Buildings. 30 LLCs. 1,348 Violations Still Open.

Worst Landlords

30 Buildings. 30 LLCs. 1,348 Violations Still Open.

Emerald Equity Group's East Harlem portfolio is all over the news. We mapped every building, traced every LLC, and scored every one. 27 of 30 buildings rate concerning. Here's what the public record shows.

What NYC's Rental Ripoff Hearings Revealed — And How to Look It Up Yourself

Tenant Rights

What NYC's Rental Ripoff Hearings Revealed — And How to Look It Up Yourself

NYC's Rental Ripoff Hearings just wrapped. Tenants showed up in five boroughs with stories of chatbot supers, three-year leaks, and profiteer landlords. Here's what the public record shows — and how to find yours.

We Looked Up Every Building in the A&E Settlement. Here's What the Public Record Shows.

Worst Landlords

We Looked Up Every Building in the A&E Settlement. Here's What the Public Record Shows.

On day 16 of his administration, Mayor Mamdani announced a $2.1M settlement with A&E Real Estate covering 14 buildings. We pulled every building through Brix — violations, ownership chains, court orders, all of it.

NYC's 'Rental Ripoff' Hearings: How to Submit Testimony That Actually Lands

Tenant Rights

NYC's 'Rental Ripoff' Hearings: How to Submit Testimony That Actually Lands

All five Rental Ripoff hearings have wrapped, but written testimony is still open until the policy report drops in early July. Here's how to show up with the receipts.

NYC Public Advocate Worst Landlord Watchlist on a clipboard with violation records, illustrating gaps in the official ranking.

Worst Landlords

We Checked Every Building on NYC's 2026 Worst Landlord List. Here's What the City Missed.

The Public Advocate's watchlist ranks landlords one way. We ranked every portfolio in the city by open violations instead — and the two lists don't agree. Here are the nine biggest, and what each one's buildings actually look like.

A prewar apartment building in Washington Heights, Manhattan, the kind of building most likely to contain rent-stabilized apartments.

Tenant Rights

7 Ways to Tell If Your Rent Is Actually Legal

I've rented five apartments in this city and only found out one of them was stabilized after I moved out. Nobody tells you. Here are the seven checks I run now, in the order I run them.

Entrance of a worn Bronx apartment building with a fire escape and an 'Emergency Call Police' sign — the reality inside Pinnacle's former rent-stabilized portfolio.

Worst Landlords

5,000 Rent-Stabilized Apartments Just Changed Hands. Here's What Pinnacle Tenants Need to Know.

Pinnacle Group defaulted on its loans and declared bankruptcy after amassing 5,000+ housing code violations. The buildings sold for $451 million — to a buyer with family ties to Pinnacle's CEO.

A&E Real Estate Just Paid $2.1 Million. We Looked Up Every Building.

Worst Landlords

A&E Real Estate Just Paid $2.1 Million. We Looked Up Every Building.

The largest settlement in HPD Anti-Harassment Unit history covers 14 buildings. A&E manages roughly 180. We pulled the full portfolio through Brix — here's what tenants are still dealing with.

Field notes

From the record, verbatim

Lines pulled straight from NYC housing files. Nothing embellished.