The city has convinced a flood of rent-controlled landlords to register with the city, specifically targeting their wallets.

The city saw a sharp increase in applications by the July 31 deadline of this year, surpassing the number of applications from previous years by nearly 200,000, the city reported.

The applications are intended to prevent landlords from terminating rent-controlled apartments without government approval and renting them out at market prices.

So far this year, almost a million apartments have been registered with the city. More are expected, as the city is still sending out late registration notices. This figure contrasts with the approximately 750,000 to 800,000 timely registrations in previous years.

The Ministry of Housing and Community Renewal has warned landlords who miss the registration deadline that they face heavy fines of $500 per month per unit.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law last year that imposes tougher penalties for failing to register with the state. Before that, the fine was just a one-time $10 surcharge that was rarely enforced, according to the newspaper.

The city is now sending around 11,000 reminders to homeowners who have not registered their rent-controlled apartments.

Michael Johnson, a spokesman for the Landlords Association’s Community Housing Improvement Program, told the news agency that 99 percent of rent-controlled property owners had complied with the new rules.

Johnson also said that some late payment notices had been sent in error because they were late payments for units that did not exist.

The new law came about after a city investigation reported a sharp decline in rent-controlled housing applications in 2022. The story revealed landlords who were renting rent-controlled apartments at market rates without government approval.

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The state’s registration data is not readily available to the public. The source used data from the tenant technology project JustFix, which pulls information from property tax notices posted online by the city.

Manhattan Representative Linda Rosenthal (D-Upper West Side) told the news agency: “If this works,” she said, referring to the new penalties she had enshrined in law, “maybe it will solve the problem.”

— Christina Previte