Where rent stabilization applies
The Emergency Tenant Protection Act covers the unincorporated areas of the Town of North Hempstead, the villages of Baxter Estates, Cedarhurst, Floral Park, Flower Hill, Freeport, Great Neck, Great Neck Plaza, Hempstead, Lynbrook, Mineola, Rockville Centre, Russell Gardens and Thomaston, and the cities of Long Beach and Glen Cove. Long Beach is covered for apartments in buildings of sixty or more accommodations, and Glen Cove for apartments in buildings of one hundred or more.
Coverage reaches buildings of six or more units built before 1 January 1974, in a locality where a survey has established a rental vacancy rate below five percent. Rent controlled apartments, motor courts, tourist homes and certain nonprofit and governmentally supervised housing sit outside it.
The list above is the state's, and it moves. Since the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 removed the geographic restriction, any municipality in New York may adopt the Act by local law, so a building that was unregulated at purchase can be regulated by the time it is sold.
What a stabilized rent may rise by
The Nassau County Rent Guidelines Board sets the figure each year. Guideline 61 permits an increase of 1.50 percent on a one year lease and 2.50 percent on a two year lease, for leases commencing on or after 1 October 2026 and on or before 30 September 2027. It applies to vacancy leases and renewal leases alike. The year before, Guideline 60 permitted 2.00 percent and 3.00 percent.
Those figures have no application to an unregulated apartment, where the lease and the statutory notice periods govern instead.
Good cause eviction does not reach Nassau, and a notice still does
The good cause eviction law is in effect in New York City by statute. Everywhere else a village, town or city adopts it by local law, and as of the state's published list no Nassau or Suffolk municipality has.
The notice requirement is a separate question, and it catches owners who read the first sentence and stop. Real Property Law section 231-c requires a landlord to append to or incorporate into any initial lease, any renewal lease, a notice of a rent increase or non-renewal, a fourteen day rent demand, or a petition, a form headed "Notice to tenant of applicability or inapplicability of the New York State good cause eviction law." The form carries no geographic exception. A Nassau landlord completes it and checks the exemption for a village, town or city outside New York City that has not adopted the law.
Where an eviction is heard
The Nassau County District Court sits at 99 Main Street in Hempstead and is open from nine to five, Monday to Friday. Its own description of its authority includes landlord and tenant matters concerning housing proceedings and evictions, alongside civil claims to fifteen thousand dollars and small claims to five thousand. The cities of Long Beach and Glen Cove each have a City Court as well.
The fee on commencing a summary proceeding in a district court is forty-five dollars.
Warrants are executed by the Enforcement Division of the Nassau County Sheriff's Department, which carries out the orders of the New York State courts.
The timetable is slower than the city's
A nonpayment proceeding in Nassau runs on Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law section 733. The notice of petition and petition are served at least ten and not more than seventeen days before the day the petition is noticed to be heard.
New York City runs on a different section. Section 732 gives a notice of petition returnable within ten days of service and a trial fixed by the clerk three to eight days after issue is joined, and it applies in a court only where the Appellate Division has provided for it by rule. The rule exists for the New York City Civil Court. The rule for the district courts contains no such provision, so the faster track stops at the county line.
The rent deposit a court may order after adjournments is also a city provision. Section 745 opens that subdivision with the words "In the city of New York," and it has no counterpart in Nassau.
What applies everywhere in New York
A nonpayment proceeding begins with a written rent demand giving at least fourteen days, served the way a notice of petition is served, and requiring in the alternative payment of the rent or possession of the premises.
Before raising a rent by five percent or more, or declining to renew, a landlord gives written notice: thirty days where the tenant has occupied under a year and holds no lease of a year or more, sixty days between one and two years, and ninety days beyond two years.
A security deposit may not exceed one month's rent. Within fourteen days of the tenant vacating, the landlord provides an itemized statement of anything retained and returns the balance, and a landlord who misses that deadline forfeits the right to retain any part of the deposit.
An application fee is limited to the actual cost of a background and credit check or twenty dollars, whichever is less, and is waived where the applicant supplies a check conducted in the previous thirty days. A late fee requires the rent to be unpaid five days past its due date and is capped at fifty dollars or five percent of the monthly rent, whichever is less.
Before a warrant is executed, the officer gives at least fourteen days' written notice, and executes on a business day between sunrise and sunset. In a nonpayment case the court vacates the warrant on tender of the full rent due at any time before execution, unless the landlord shows the rent was withheld in bad faith.
Village rental permits
Several Nassau municipalities require a rental permit, and the requirement sits apart from anything in state law. Two examples show how far they differ from each other.
Rockville Centre requires registration and a rental permit before a dwelling unit is occupied, and bars a broker or agent from offering a unit without one. The permit runs two years. A late application carries a charge of twice the fee, prorated. Fines reach five hundred dollars for a first violation, a thousand for a second within eighteen months and twenty-five hundred for a third, with each unit and each week counted separately. Owner-occupied homes of one to three families, owner-occupied units in larger buildings, and units registered under the Multiple Dwelling Law or the Multiple Residence Law are exempt.
Freeport goes further. Its code makes it unlawful to let premises for residence occupancy without a permit, and separately unlawful to list, advertise or show a unit, or to accept a deposit of rent or security or a commission, where no permit is in effect. Its permit also runs two years, and premises not occupied by the legal owner are presumed to be rented for a fee.
Neither code bars an unregistered owner from bringing a proceeding. Both make the renting itself an offense.