How the NYC Landlord Ripoff Watch is Built

Every operator receives a distress score from 0 to 100. The score is a fixed-threshold normalized composite of eight signals — each normalized individually against a p90 threshold derived from the full operator population before weighting. A score of 100 does not mean a landlord has the most violations in absolute terms; it means their violation rate, eviction rate, and other signals are all at or above the threshold that defines the worst-performing operators in each category.

Score inputs and weights

The unit denominator is the sum of residential units across the operator's confirmed HPD-registered buildings, from NYC PLUTO data. When PLUTO data is unavailable for a building, the building count is used as a proxy.

Post-normalization adjustments

• Double Offender multiplier: Operators on the Worst Landlord list whose eviction rate also falls in the top 10% citywide receive a ×1.25 multiplier on their normalized score.
• Vacate order bonus: Operators with HPD vacate order history receive +3 points added after normalization.
• Worst Landlord floor: All operators on the Public Advocate's Worst Landlord list receive a minimum score of 70, regardless of violation counts.
• Portfolio wealth multiplier: To surface the impact of large-scale landlords who may have lower per-unit rates but affect thousands of tenants, scores are amplified based on total DOF market value across the operator's portfolio:

  Portfolio market value	Score multiplier
  ≥ $500 million	×1.60
  ≥ $100 million	×1.45
  ≥ $50 million	×1.30
  ≥ $10 million	×1.15
  Under $10 million	No adjustment

All final scores are capped at 100. Scores are recalculated nightly and the leaderboard ranking is refreshed hourly.

All data used in the Landlord Ripoff Watch is sourced from official NYC and New York State government records, made available through NYC Open Data or direct agency feeds. MetroDeeds does not collect data from landlords, tenants, or private parties.

• HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations — Open, pending, and recently closed violations logged by NYC's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Used for Class A, B, and C violation counts and flag detection (Speculation Watch, AEP). NYC Open Data ↗
• ACRIS Real Property Records — NYC's Automated City Register Information System. Used for deed transfer history, acquisition dates, buyer and seller names, and consideration amounts. ACRIS ↗
• NYC DOF Property Valuation (RPAD / PLUTO) — Department of Finance assessed values and NYC Planning PLUTO data. Used for portfolio market value, assessed value, unit counts, building class, and year built. NYC Open Data ↗
• NYC Public Advocate Worst Landlord Watchlist — The annual list of the worst landlords in New York City, maintained by the NYC Public Advocate's office based on tenant complaints and violation records. Public Advocate ↗
• NYC 311 Service Requests — Tenant complaints submitted to the city's 311 system. Used for heat and hot water complaint counts per building. NYC 311 ↗
• NYC Office of Court Administration — Eviction Filings — Housing court eviction execution records. Used to calculate eviction execution rate per unit and to flag Serial Evictors and Double Offenders. NYC Housing Court ↗
• HPD Registration Contacts — The head officers, corporate owners, and agents named on HPD building registrations. Used to attribute buildings to individual operators and to identify management firms.

Flags appear next to each operator's name in the leaderboard and on individual operator profiles. They represent specific designations derived from the source data above.

The Landlord Ripoff Watch surfaces named, HPD-accountable operators on for-profit residential rental portfolios. An operator is included when HPD registration records show them as a Head Officer, Corporate Owner, or Owner on buildings they directly control — the roles that carry legal accountability under NYC housing law.

We deliberately exclude certain categories of operators, not because they are beyond scrutiny, but because their distress scores reflect portfolio context rather than personal management decisions:

• Non-profit affordable housing operators — LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credit), HDFC (Housing Development Fund Corporation), HUD-assisted, and Mitchell-Lama portfolio operators. These organizations operate under regulatory frameworks that impose different maintenance and eviction constraints than market-rate landlords. Violation counts in regulated-affordable portfolios often reflect scale and regulatory reporting requirements, not tenant neglect.
• Cooperative and condominium management firms — Where the legal defendant in a housing court case is the cooperative corporation or homeowners association (not the management company's executives), the individual manager's HPD role does not create the same personal accountability as a direct landlord-tenant relationship.
• Government housing operators — NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) and other government-operated housing programs.

This classification is applied through a registry of ~90 institutional management firms maintained by MetroDeeds. Applying to have an organization added to or removed from the registry: hello@metrodeeds.com.

Note: exclusion from this list is not a finding that an operator is a good landlord. Many excluded organizations have significant violation histories that are publicly available through HPD's own search tools.

• LLC-only landlords: Landlords who register all buildings through LLCs or corporations with no personal name on HPD registrations do not appear on this list. Their violation and eviction history exists in HPD records but cannot be attributed to an individual. This is a known gap affecting an estimated several hundred NYC landlords, including some on the Public Advocate's watchlist.
• IndividualOwner registration gap: HPD uses multiple contact types to identify building owners. Landlords registered exclusively as "IndividualOwner" in HPD (a less common contact type) are currently underrepresented in our operator matching pipeline. We are working to resolve this.
• Data lag: HPD violation records typically reflect filings within 24–48 hours of inspection. ACRIS deed records can lag 30–60 days from the date of recording at NYC Finance. Eviction execution data reflects NYC Housing Court records and may lag court processing time.
• Name variation: HPD registrations use free-text name fields. The same individual can appear under multiple spellings (apostrophes, hyphens, abbreviations). MetroDeeds applies normalization and deduplication logic, but some operators may appear under more than one entry for name variants we have not yet resolved.
• Portfolio attribution: Buildings are attributed to operators based on HPD registration data, which reflects ownership as of the last registration filing. Buildings sold recently may still be attributed to a prior owner if the new owner has not yet filed an HPD registration update.
• Market value: Portfolio market values are from NYC DOF RPAD assessments (the curmkttot field), which reflect NYC Finance's appraisal — not actual sale price. NYC assessed values are typically a fraction of true market value and should be treated as relative, not absolute.