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Updated 10 days ago, 12/18/2024
Evicting rent stabilised tenants to convert an SRO to a primary residence?
I am looking at buying a townhouse in NYC that is currently designated as an SRO with two rent stabilised tenants living on one of the floors and the other floor unit is vacant. The townhouse we are looking at has a Certificate of No Harassment in place, open violations and a vacate order. The tenants are currently in court with a title dispute so the house would have to be paid for cash only.
I would like to convert it to a primary residence and turn the garden level into a separate two bedroom apartment for use as an in law suite. I found this fact sheet which seems to indicate it would be possible to evict the rent stabilised tenants so long as they haven't been living there for more than 15 years or are older than 62 or disabled: https://hcr.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2020/10/fact-sheet...
From the fact sheet it's not clear to me if I would be able to evict both tenants or just one of them because it says you can take possession of only one dwelling unit and I am not sure if each of the studio rooms counts as a separate dwelling unit?
Does anyone have any practical experience with similar situations and if so what was the outcome and how long did it take to resolve everything? How long does the legal process take, and can we move in and live in the unoccupied floors while the situation is being resolved? The house currently can't get financing but do you know if the tenant situation was resolved if I would then be able to finance the property so I could do the renovations? If there is no other way to evict the tenants and instead I offered to renovate the garden level into a two bedroom apartment would they have to accept that offer?
Thanks for your advice.