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As New Yorkers, we're used to regular reports of terrible landlords in NYC, but what about the good ones?
If there's a good landlord, we want to know about it because that is often a rare thing. Openigloo, a Brooklyn-based app that lets renters anonymously rate their landlords, has identified the city’s highest-performing residential portfolios by looking through its data.
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It analyzed 80 residential portfolios with at least 500 units that qualified with ratings, recommendation rates and city violations in the 90th percentile. What they found are five landlords who have an average building rating of at least 4.1 out of 5 (the city-wide average rating is 3.2) and with 80 percent or more of residents who would recommend their buildings to a friend (the city-wide average is 40 percent). Lastly, the following portfolios all have violation per unit ratios of less than 0.007 (the city-wide average is 0.7).
Below are the top five landlords in NYC, according to openigloo:
5. Rudin Management
Rudin Management owns 17 residential units spanning over 2,000 apartments. Rudin renters are happy with the friendliness of the building staff and spacious apartments. Areas for improvement? A smoother lease renewal process.
4. Columbia University
Columbia University is the largest landowner in New York City by the number of addresses and manages over 5,000 apartments across 150 residential buildings. While made up of mostly students, renters are overwhelmingly happy with the buildings’ affordability and the attentiveness of management.
3. Glenwood Management
Glenwood is the developer, owner and manager of 27 multi-family properties in Manhattan covering more than 8,000 units. One of their addresses, 500 East 85th Street boasts high ratings and tenants are happy with how responsive management is. Complaints? There are long wait times to use the building's shared laundry room.
2. TF Cornerstone
TF Cornerstone owns and manages 18 residential buildings spanning more than 7,500 apartments in Manhattan, Brooklyn & Queens. One of the highest-rated buildings on Openigloo is one of their buildings in the Financial District—2 Gold Street. The 650-unit building boasts a recommendation rate of 100 percent and tenants appreciate the friendly building staff. An area for improvement? The leasing office can be difficult to get a hold of sometimes.
1. Ogden Cap Properties
Ogden owns and manages five residential properties with a total of 3,416 units in Manhattan. One of their addresses, 225 East 95th Street boasts high ratings and tenants are happy with the building’s amenities despite having to pay extra to use them, according to a tenant review.
If you want to discover more highly-rated landlords and buildings, you can get openigloo on your phone and search for specific apartment buildings and read reviews left by tenants about the condition of the building and a one- to five-star rating of the neighbors, the owner responsiveness, heat, cleanliness, noise levels, pest control, garbage management and water pressure. The landlord's name is usually included on buildings' pages as well as written tenant reviews and whether there are any COVID-19 measures.
Essentially real-time city data about buildings, open violation data, bed bug complaints, and eviction history is all at your fingertips. And of course, you can also anonymously submit your own reviews of a building you live at or have lived at.
Allia Mohamed and Srujan Routhu created openigloo with the goal of saving New Yorkers from untenable living situations after going through some of their own. That being said, this isn't a place to rant about your landlord. It's meant to provide a place to provide helpful criticism and transparency.
What do you think about their list of the top five landlords? Do they deserve to make the cut?