This story was reported by  Dashiell Allen, Génesis Dávila Santiago, María Mónica Fernández, Deidre Foley, Yi Liu, Nicholas Morgan, Jonnathan Pulla, Rebecca Redelmeier, Liz Rosenberg and Impu Sehgal.

A woman stands outside the Brooklyn apartment building that has been her home since 2017. She covers her head with the hood of a gray sweatshirt and describes her apartment’s state of disrepair.

It has become normal for the tenant, who requested that her name not be used for fear of retaliation from her landlord, to see things fall apart — literally. For years, she said, she has dealt with leaks in the kitchen, bathroom and living room of her Flatbush apartment.

A reporter’s visit to the unit showed chipping paint on the bathroom walls, with plaster exposed in many areas. The entire one-bedroom apartment has four functional outlets, she said.

“If you live in an apartment, you’re paying money for that. You should get the service you need. The [management is] supposed to check on you to make sure everything is okay. But when you complain, nobody comes… the landlord doesn’t care,” the tenant said.

Several years ago, she said, part of the bathroom ceiling collapsed and fell on her, injuring her shoulder. She said she had to quit her job as a certified nurse aide because she couldn’t do heavy lifting due to back issues. She now works as a home health aide, a job with similar duties but lower pay.

The tenant shared what she said were photos of the ceiling above her shower shortly after the ceiling allegedly collapsed and injured her in 2020.

The tenant’s shower in November 2023. The ceiling was patched but mold remains. “When you shower, the wall looks spoiled,” she said. (Photos: Deidre Foley)

“I feel pain all the time,” the tenant said. “Every day you get up with the same issue… until something collapses.”

The woman lives in an apartment building owned by a limited liability company, a status commonly referred to by its initials — LLC — in legal and real estate communities.

As the name implies, LLCs can provide a personal legal shield to owners. The legal structure can also make it difficult for tenants to determine who their landlord is, beyond a company name. And in cases where landlords own multiple buildings under different LLCs, making connections between the properties — and owners — can prove extremely challenging.

“It’s all but impossible to do,” said Mark Willis, a senior policy fellow at New York University’s Furman Center, a research center studying land use, real estate, housing and urban affairs.

‘Worst Landlord’ Status

The vast majority of landlords in New York City choose to go the LLC route —  a 2022 report by the housing nonprofit JustFix estimates that 89 percent of all New York City apartment units registered with the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) list a corporate owner.

One case in point: It took a year-long investigation by the NYCity News Service, drawing on two separate databases and a Freedom of Information Law request, to follow the convoluted paper trail back to the Flatbush woman’s landlord. 

According to data from JustFix.nyc, a public database aggregated by the housing nonprofit, landlord Robert Izsak’s portfolio is connected to at least two dozen apartment buildings around the city.  JustFix’s Who Owns What database analyzes the information of roughly 200,000 registered buildings in New York City. 

Izsak has shown up on city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ “Worst Landlords” list in each of the last three editions, most recently placing No. 11 in 2023. 

Bed-Stuy resident Keiko Niccolini, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo speak outside the BRC shelter at 85 Lexington Ave.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (middle)  publishes an annual “Worst Landlords” list.

A NYCity News Service analysis of HPD violations issued between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2022 found buildings linked to Izsak had more than three times the number of Class B and Class C citations than the citywide average. HPD classifies B violations, such as leaks, holes and missing smoke detectors as hazardous, while C violations, such as lack of heat or hot water, are considered immediately hazardous. 

Some 16 tenants in buildings tied to Izsak described problems with their apartments to our reporters. 

Meanwhile, JustFix records show that LLCs Izsak is attached to purchased six properties in New York City in late 2020. The purchases came amid a nationwide buying splurge amid the pandemic, as the share of investors who bought homes in cities across the U.S. rose to new levels. 

In New York City, the pandemic only accelerated an already existing trend: Over the past 20 years, the housing market has increasingly become corporatized, especially in areas where people are being displaced at rapid rates, according to a 2022 Just Fix report.

The rental market in New York City has tightened since the worst days of the COVID crisis, with the vacancy rate at a multi-decade low of 1.4 percent as of 2023, according to an annual report from the city comptroller’s office.

The NYCity News Service attempted to contact Izsak through a phone number listed under his realty business, sent letters to two addresses associated with his firm and sent notes to three email addresses listed for him seeking comment about our findings and tenants’ complaints. 

A person who answered the phone listed to Izsak’s realty business hung up after hearing a request for comment and sent subsequent calls to voicemail. One email listed for Izsak bounced back, while two emails to two other addresses went unanswered. Letters sent via the U.S. Mail had not been responded to as of publication of this story.   

Most of the LLCs tied to Izsak are linked by a shared business address at 3030 Ocean Ave. in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, according to the JustFix database. Like many landlords that use LLCs, Izsak’s name typically appears in the database alongside several other names, and under several different titles, such as “agent” and “head officer” of the LLC.

Every year, landlords of properties that produce income, are assessed at $40,000 or more and consist of at least 10 units, are allowed to file forms called tax certiorari, if they want to dispute their tax bills. 

While landlords have little to lose financially by filing those tax forms to dispute their tax  assessments, the documents offer a look inside the LLCs.

The NYCity News Service obtained data for 2021 from the tax dispute forms through a Freedom of Information Law request, and used them to identify landlords who had recently bought buildings and who spent relatively low percentages of their rental income on repairing and maintaining their buildings. 

Many of the buildings tied to Izsak fit that criteria, records show. The tax dispute filings also indicate that the vast majority of Izsak’s tenants live in rent-stabilized apartments, which housing advocates say are often under-maintained by landlords looking to drive out tenants and “warehouse” units, claiming they can’t afford to make upgrades.

‘Cockroaches in the Walls’ 

NYCity News Service reporters spoke to 19 tenants across six buildings tied to Izsak. Of those, 16 residents said they’ve experienced problems with heat and hot water, roaches and ceiling leaks, among other issues. Many also said that their building manager often took weeks to respond to maintenance requests, if they were addressed at all.

“There’s a lot of cockroaches in the walls,” said Pabel Ahammed, who lives in a Borough Park, Brooklyn, building — one of the apartment houses that helped land Izsak on the Public Advocate’s 2023 worst landlords list

“The first time we cleaned our house, but nowadays if I clean it, it’s going to happen again,” said Ahammed, who lives with a roommate. “So now I’m getting lazy … I’m not happy with my apartment. It’s really hard.” 

The ceiling above Pabel Ahammed’s shower in September 2023. (PHOTO/ Génesis Dávila Santiago)

Back in Flatbush, another tenant who didn’t want her name used out of fear of landlord retaliation, said she’s had to spend her own money to make repairs. She said she’s experienced leaks in her bathroom, kitchen and living room since renting the apartment in 2009.

Her home is infested with cockroaches and mice, and many surfaces need painting, she said. The building’s super, she added, hasn’t been responsive to her complaints.

Records suggest other tenants in buildings tied to Izsak have experienced similar problems.  

In addition to placing 11th on the worst landlords list in 2023, with an average of 1,173 open violations across six buildings in the previous year, Izsak came in 12th in 2022 and 24th in 2021.  

William’s list rates landlords based on the number of Class B and Class C violations registered with HPD. His office examined multi-family rental buildings and excluded rentals with fewer than three units, as well as most condominums and co-ops.

The NYCity News Service downloaded all hazardous and “immediately hazardous violations issued by the HPD between 2018 and 2022. Reporters then found the average number of B and C violations across all buildings as well as for those linked to Izsak. 

Buildings linked to Izsak logged an average of 45.3 combined Class B and Class C violations — more than three times the citywide average of 13.7, our analysis found. 

Class C violations are classified as immediately hazardous and should be resolved within a time specified by the inspector — for instance, heat and hot water issues require landlords to make fixes immediately, while lead paint violations need to be addressed within 21 days.

Class B violations, which include vermin, substantial mold and tub cracks, should be remedied within 30 days, according to HPD.

The city can order emergency repair when an owner fails to address a hazardous condition. According to NYC Open Data, between 2005 and 2023, the city ordered emergency repair work 73 times to address hazardous conditions in buildings tied to Izsak. The repairs totaled $9,386.93, records show.

A Limited ‘Transparency Act’

Purchasing a building through an LLC is considered standard practice in New York due to the legal advantages the move creates for owners. The most immediate plus for landlords: a layer of protection for any legal liability related to properties they own. 

If a tenant files a lawsuit, it can be hard to locate the actual owner or owners. Even when the owners are identified, only the LLC is liable. The owners’ personal assets and other properties are protected from liability. 

“It is done to limit investor liability and enable pass-throughs of profits as personal income, without multiple taxation events that would take place in a corporation,” Robert Buchsbaum, a lecturer at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, said via email.

In December, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the LLC Transparency Act, which will create a database of the so-called “beneficial” owners of LLCs — those who have a stake in the equity or control over the building. But that database will be accessible only to government agencies and law enforcement, due to what legislators described as privacy concerns. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the LLC Transparency Act in December 2023.

The law may be of limited use, given the lengths some landlords go to keep their identity hidden, said the Furman Center’s Willis.

“We can’t tell how many buildings are owned by the same beneficial owners if each of the buildings is in a separate LLC,” said Willis.

These layers of protection and anonymity can help landlords profit from rents while sacrificing the maintenance or improvement of the buildings, according to a 2019 study of rental properties in Milwaukee. 

Angel Vera, of Make the Road New York, a community organizing group, said in his experience corporate landlords might be less likely to address issues in their buildings compared to individual landlords. 

“On some occasions, it works, but generally, individual landlords take better care,” said Vera, who has worked for years with tenants facing housing displacement.

From 2009 to 2019, property owners’ spending on rental housing rose nationwide from $43 billion to $79 billion, according to the America’s Rental Housing 2022 report. Most of the spending increase was driven by capital improvements, such as major renovations, while spending on routine maintenance increased by $1 billion over this period, to $22 billion, according to the report. 

What’s a ‘Reasonable Return’?

To landlord groups, rising housing code violations and run-down buildings are a reflection of the difficult balance owners have to strike between investing into a building and making a profit. 

Some landlords would have to spend more than their total income on operations and repairs to bring their buildings up to code, said Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a New York City landlords group. 

“This system is a terrible system. It doesn’t work for property owners, it doesn’t work for renters,” said Martin. “A perfect system is one in which property owners are able to make a reasonable return on their investment.”

“This system is a terrible system” — Jay Martin of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a local landlords group.

Yet, even after factoring out rising operational and maintenance costs, landlords’ net income citywide has expanded, on average, by nearly 50% since 1990, a 2023 report by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board found. And the income kept growing, even even after the state passed stricter laws to protect rent-stabilized units in 2019.

“When someone invests money, they’re not guaranteed a right to profit,” said Lucy Block, senior research and data associate at the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development, a coalition of community groups dedicated to preserving affordable and low-income housing. “It’s wrong to prioritize profit making of owners over tenants’ ability to stay housed.”

Meanwhile, the City Council last year passed a bill, dubbed the “Worst Landlord Law,” designed to make neglecting buildings more painful for landlords. 

The bill mandates a crackdown on landlords who falsely self-certify that repairs have been made. The city now must identify landlords who “shamelessly dodge accountability and avoid repairs, while tenants suffer,” Williams said when the bill was voted on. HPD will be required to publish a list of the 100 worst buildings where landlords falsely certify repairs under the new law. 

Vacant Apartments Abound

For many buildings, scant spending on upkeep means it’s impossible to keep the city’s housing stock in good repair, according to housing experts and advocates. Landlord groups have said at least 20,000 rent-stabilized units currently sit vacant because owners are unable to finance necessary repairs.

According to the Independent Budget Office, 42,275 rent-stabilized apartments were registered as vacant in 2022. The exact number of vacant rent-stabilized units is highly disputed — with reports ranging from 2,500 to 88,000, according to various reports. 

Coveted rent-controlled apartments, which make up roughly one percent of the city’s rental market, are slowly being re-classified or removed from regulation, experts say. Rent-stabilized apartments, representing about half of the city’s rental stock, also continue to disappear or remain off the market.

The cost of living in a rent-stabilized unit keeps climbing: On June 17, the city Rent Guidelines Board voted to let landlords hike rents by 2.75 percent on one-year leases and 5.25 percent on two-year leases come October. It marked the third straight year of increases.

Meanwhile, average rents are at record highs. 

“This is nothing new,” said Adriene Holder, chief attorney of the Civil Practice at the Legal Aid Society and former tenant representative member of the Rent Guidelines Board under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “There’s a lot of landlords that do not reinvest in their buildings, at least for those units of people where they think that they don’t have to, because they’re trying to get people to leave so that they can charge more for rent when the apartment turns over.”

No Place Like Home

Suleyman Zaburov, a Russian immigrant who has lived in his Brooklyn apartment in Sheepshead Bay since 1995, has no intention of leaving. Still, he said, he’d been tempted at times to move.

Izsak became Zaburov’s landlord in late 2020, according to records listed on JustFix. In recent years, Zaburov said he had lived with an infestation of cockroaches, a chipped ceiling and a water leak from his refrigerator that damaged his floor. 

He said he’s called 311, the city’s non-emergency helpline — spurring dozens of HPD violations in his apartment building, according to data from JustFix. 

Zaburov said he considered moving to Florida, where his daughter lives, but he relies on Medicaid that he receives in New York. Health and mobility issues would also make it difficult for him to relocate, he said. 

Even if could, he doesn’t want to leave his community. He’s friends with many of his neighbors, appreciates living in a neighborhood with an Eastern European flavor and enjoys life — outside his apartment. 

“I love it because the ocean is” close by, Zaburov said. “It’s like a resort area.”

(You can find the data and analyses for this special report on Github.)