Landlord Atlas

What does New York law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 29, 2026 All New York topics →

New York implies into every written or oral residential lease a warranty that the premises and the areas within the landlord's control are fit for human habitation, match the uses the parties reasonably intended, and subject nobody to conditions endangering or detrimental to life, health or safety.

Cited to RPL 235-b — Warranty of habitability (1), (2), (3) and 17 more cited sources · Verified August 29, 2026

The statute stops there — it sets no notice requirement, no cure period, and no remedy — so the working rules come from the Court of Appeals: a substantial housing, building or sanitation code violation is prima facie evidence of unfitness without being an automatic breach, and damages are the difference between the value the premises would have had as warranted, measured by the rent reserved under the lease, and their value during the breach, taken either as money or as a percentage rent reduction set off in a nonpayment case. New York gives tenants no statutory repair-and-deduct and no habitability-specific right to end the lease; the leverage is the rent abatement, plus two statewide court routes — a stay with rent deposited in court that a judge may spend on repairs and fuel, and a mandatory stay whenever the landlord's failure to pay a utility bill cuts off service. The specific building duties are narrower than they look: the Multiple Dwelling Law and the Multiple Residence Law reach only buildings housing three or more families, so for a rented one- or two-family house outside New York City the warranty and the local code are the whole of the law. Retaliation is presumed for one year after a protected act, with the landlord bearing the burden of proving another motive, except in owner-occupied buildings with fewer than four units.

New York habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from Statute and a court-recognized implied warranty, each doing independent work
Duty source details Two sources do independent work. Real Property Law § 235-b implies into every written or oral lease or rental agreement for residential premises a warranty that the premises and the areas within the landlord's control are fit for human habitation, are in a condition matching the uses reasonably intended by the parties, and subject the occupants to no conditions endangering or detrimental to their life, health or safety. The statute stops there — it states no notice requirement, no cure period, no remedy and no damages measure. Park West Management Corp. v. Mitchell, 47 N.Y.2d 316 (1979), a unanimous Court of Appeals decision, supplies what the statute omits: the damages formula, the rule that a substantial code violation is prima facie evidence of unfitness without being an automatic breach, the reasonable-person test for what counts as a breach, and the limit that a landlord is not an absolute insurer of amenities that do not affect habitability.
Who is covered Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live More than one source does real work — the details on this page say which
What must be kept in repair Three layers do real work, and they cover different buildings. Statewide, § 235-b states a general standard with no list at all: fit for human habitation, in a condition matching the uses reasonably intended, and free of conditions endangering or detrimental to life, health or safety, with common areas and areas within the landlord's control expressly inside the warranty and both latent and patent defects covered. The Court of Appeals filled in what that means — a substantial violation of a housing, building or sanitation code is prima facie evidence that the premises are not habitable, but a violation is not automatically a breach, and it is threats to the health and safety of the tenant, not code violations as such, that set the warranty's reach; the court's own examples were insect or rodent infestation, insufficient heat and plumbing facilities, significantly dangerous electrical outlets or wiring, and inadequate sanitation facilities. The third layer is specific duties for buildings housing three or more families: the Multiple Dwelling Law requires every multiple dwelling, its roof and its lot to be kept in good repair and requires the owner to keep it clean and free of vermin, dirt, filth and garbage, to clean every public and service part, to take up and clean public-area carpets at least once a year, to paint or paper interior wall surfaces and repaint or repaper them whenever needed to keep them sanitary, and to build rat-proof any dwelling erected after January 1, 1947. The Multiple Residence Law states the parallel repair-and-cleanliness duty for the rest of the state. Local housing codes supply the rest.
Heat standard type No heat-specific standard beyond the general duty
Heat standard details No heat-specific figures or season stated
Headline repair day count No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern
Notice and repair-window rules New York states no notice period and no cure window for the warranty. Section 235-b sets neither, and Park West sets neither — the opinion does not discuss tenant notice at all, so nothing in it can be read as imposing one. The warranty turns on the condition of the premises and on the landlord's satisfactory maintenance of them, and the fact-finder weighs the severity of the violation, the duration of the conditions and the effectiveness of the steps the landlord took to abate them. The specific statutory mechanisms have their own triggers instead. A rent-deposit stay under RPAPL § 755 needs either proof of a municipal notice or order to remove a nuisance or violation or to make repairs — which additionally puts the burden on the landlord to disprove the condition as the notice describes it — or proof of the condition itself. In New York City, the Multiple Dwelling Law's rent-impairing-violation defence runs on six months of the violation remaining uncorrected after notice of it, tolled where the owner files plans within three months and files amendments within thirty days of a disapproval.
Repair and deduct No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No New York statute authorises a tenant to repair a condition and deduct the cost from rent, and no appellate court has recognised such a right — the only New York decisions stating one are New York City Civil Court decisions from 1971 and 1981, the earlier of which adopted a New Jersey rule four years before § 235-b existed. Park West, the Court of Appeals' own survey of the subject, does not recognise the remedy and expressly declines to comment on the availability of remedies not before it. What actually does the work people mean by repair-and-deduct in New York is RPAPL § 755(3): while a stay is in force, the court may direct — on three days' notice to all parties — the release of the deposited rent to a contractor or materialman to pay properly presented bills for maintaining and making necessary repairs to the building, including fuel, electricity, gas, janitorial services and repairs necessary to remove violations, on a showing by the tenant that the landlord is not meeting those obligations. It is repair funded from rent, but ordered by a court rather than performed by the tenant. A tenant who repairs and deducts unilaterally has no statutory defence for the deduction in a nonpayment proceeding; the tenant's route to money is the rent abatement the warranty provides.
Rent withholding or escrow Yes — at least one lawful path exists — How: withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues; a court or agency escrow program; rent paid into court or a registry as the price of the defense — New York's routes are structurally different from each other and should not be collapsed. First, the warranty itself works defensively: because the tenant's duty to pay rent is coextensive with the landlord's duty to maintain the premises, a tenant may answer a summary nonpayment proceeding by counterclaiming or pleading the breach and taking a percentage reduction of the contracted-for rent as a setoff, or may sue for the money in a plenary action. No deposit, certification or filing comes first. Second, RPAPL § 755 is a statewide court rent-deposit and stay: on proof of a municipal notice or order, or of the condition itself, where the condition constructively evicts the tenant from part of the premises or is, or is likely to become, dangerous to life, health or safety, the court may stay a dispossess proceeding or an action for rent. The tenant gets the stay only by depositing the rent then due with the clerk — measured by the preceding month's liability or the monthly rent reserved — and the stay can be vacated on three days' notice if the tenant misses a deposit by more than five days after it falls due. No stay is granted where the tenant's own wilful or negligent act created the condition, and costs against a tenant whose wilful act caused it are capped at twenty-five dollars. RPAPL § 756 is the mandatory sibling: where utilities are discontinued in part of a dwelling because the landlord failed to pay for service the landlord contracted for, any dispossess proceeding or action for rent SHALL be stayed until the landlord pays and service is restored — no deposit required. Third, in cities of four hundred thousand or more, meaning New York City, Multiple Dwelling Law § 302-a lets a tenant stop paying rent while a recorded rent-impairing violation stays uncorrected six months after notice; to raise it as a defence the resident must affirmatively plead and prove the facts and must deposit the rent sought with the clerk AT THE TIME OF FILING THE ANSWER, which vitiates the owner's right to terminate the lease for nonpayment, and the clerk pays the money to whichever side prevails. Fourth, in New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester counties, one-third or more of a building's tenants — or, in the city, the housing-maintenance-code commissioner — may bring an article 7-A proceeding for a judgment directing rents into court and their use to remedy conditions dangerous to life, health or safety, with the court able to appoint an administrator to run the building.
Termination over habitability failures No habitability-specific termination right is stated — New York states no habitability-specific right to end the lease. Section 235-b answers a breach with a reduction in what the tenant owes rather than with a notice-and-terminate sequence, and neither the statute nor Park West supplies termination machinery. A tenant who leaves is relying on the general law of leases rather than on the warranty statute, and the practical New York remedy for an unfit dwelling is the rent abatement, the court rent-deposit routes, or the tenant receivership programme.
Essential-service remedies Yes — distinct statutory remedies for essential-service failures — New York gives essential-service failures distinct treatment, though not through a faster repair clock. Where utilities are discontinued in part of a dwelling because the landlord, or another person in control of it, failed to pay for service the landlord had contracted for, RPAPL § 756 makes the stay of any dispossess proceeding or rent action mandatory until the landlord pays what is owed and the utilities are restored to working order — and unlike the § 755 stay it carries no deposit requirement. Real Property Law § 235-a separately lets a residential tenant offset a utility payment against rent, and gives punitive damages against the owner of a multiple dwelling; deliberate landlord shutoffs and lockouts are covered with the eviction rules rather than here. In New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester counties, a lack of heat, running water, light, electricity or adequate sewage disposal facilities, or an infestation by rodents, is a ground for an article 7-A tenant receivership proceeding with no waiting period at all — the five-day duration requirement in that section attaches only to the catch-all ground of any other condition dangerous to life, health or safety, and getting that clause boundary right matters. The Court of Appeals also named insufficient heat and plumbing facilities among the conditions that adversely affect health and safety under the warranty itself.
Retaliation protection Protected by a general retaliation statute — One year. Where the landlord acts within a year of the tenant's protected act, retaliation is presumed and the landlord carries the burden of proving a non-retaliatory motive by a preponderance of the evidence. — Real Property Law § 223-b operates as a presumption that shifts the burden onto the landlord: inside the one-year window the landlord must prove a credible non-retaliatory reason for the eviction, the refusal to renew or the change in terms by a preponderance of the evidence. Coverage is broad but not universal — the section reaches all rental residential premises EXCEPT owner-occupied dwellings with fewer than four units. A related subdivision closes off a workaround: a lease clause requiring the tenant to pay a fee, penalty or other charge for making a complaint is void, and a landlord who imposes one is liable to the tenant for three times the amount. — Section 223-b protects a tenant who in good faith complains about the condition of the premises and who acts to secure or enforce rights arising from the tenancy, and it separately voids any lease clause charging the tenant a fee, penalty or other charge for making a complaint, making the landlord liable for three times that amount. The protection does not extend to tenants of owner-occupied dwellings with fewer than four units.
Damages, penalties, and defenses The damages measure comes from Park West and it is a subtraction, not a ceiling: the difference between the fair market value of the premises if they had been as warranted, AS MEASURED BY THE RENT RESERVED UNDER THE LEASE, and the value of the premises during the period of the breach. The award may take the form of money in a plenary action or of a percentage reduction of the contracted-for rent as a setoff in a summary nonpayment proceeding where the tenant counterclaims or pleads the breach as a defence — the Court of Appeals upheld a ten per cent rent reduction on the facts before it. The fact-finder weighs the severity of the violation, the duration of the conditions and the effectiveness of the steps the landlord took to abate them, and both sides may give opinion evidence on the diminution in value because both are familiar with the premises. Section 235-b(3) adds three riders: expert testimony is not required; damages attributable to a strike or labour dispute are excluded, which is precisely the class of damages Park West itself awarded before that paragraph existed; and a paragraph guards against double recovery where a rent agency has already acted. Section 235-b contains no attorney-fee provision — New York's reciprocal fee rule sits in a separate section of the Real Property Law. The Multiple Dwelling Law's rent-impairing defence carries its own machinery: four owner defences, a bad-faith sanction letting the court charge the resident the owner's reasonable costs including counsel fees up to one hundred dollars, and a hard trap — a resident who voluntarily pays rent that could have been withheld has no claim or cause of action to recover it back, a voluntary payment being anything other than one made under a judgment. In an article 7-A proceeding the owner's three defences are that the conditions did not exist or have been remedied, that they were caused by a petitioning tenant or by other residents or their families or guests, or that a tenant or resident refused the owner entry to correct them. Elsewhere the tenant-fault rules are narrow: a § 755 stay is never granted where the tenant's wilful or negligent act created the condition, and under the Multiple Dwelling Law the owner is relieved only where a violation is caused AND CONTINUED SOLELY by the tenant or those under the tenant's control, with the tenant separately liable for wilful acts and exposed to the same civil penalties as the owner.
Can the duty be waived or shifted Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page
Waiver and delegation rules Section 235-b(2) makes any agreement by a lessee or tenant waiving or modifying the warranty void as contrary to public policy, and the Court of Appeals put the same point in structural terms: because the landlord holds ultimate control of and responsibility for the building, the duty to maintain it is NONDELEGABLE and NONWAIVABLE. New York has no tenant-delegation carve-out of the kind most states write for single-family houses — nothing in § 235-b lets the parties shift repair duties to the tenant by agreement. Article 7-A carries its own anti-waiver rule: any lease provision waiving a benefit of that article for a tenant, resident or occupant is against public policy and void. There is one legislative exception, and it is not a private waiver at all — RPAPL § 783 suspends the § 235-b defence against rent claimed by a court-appointed article 7-A administrator, unless the conditions were caused by that administrator's own unreasonable performance.
Leading court decisions Park West Management Corp. v. Mitchell, 47 N.Y.2d 316 (1979), 391 N.E.2d 1288, 418 N.Y.S.2d 310 — Construing Real Property Law § 235-b, a unanimous Court of Appeals held that the landlord impliedly promises that the demised premises and the areas within the landlord's control are fit for human occupation at the start of the tenancy and remain so throughout the term, that the promise reaches latent and patent defects alike and conditions caused by ordinary deterioration, work stoppages by employees, acts of third parties or natural disaster, and that the duty is nondelegable and nonwaivable — while a landlord is not an absolute insurer of amenities that do not affect habitability, and the test is whether, in the eyes of a reasonable person, defects deprive the tenant of the essential functions a residence is expected to provide. A substantial violation of a housing, building or sanitation code is prima facie evidence that the premises are not habitable, but a code violation is not an automatic breach: it may be de minimis or have no impact on habitability, and it is threats to the health and safety of the tenant, not code violations as such, that determine the warranty's reach. Damages are the difference between the fair market value of the premises if they had been as warranted, as measured by the rent reserved under the lease, and their value during the breach, awarded either as money in a plenary action or as a percentage reduction of the contracted-for rent set off in a summary nonpayment proceeding.
Local rules Local law matters more in New York than in almost any other state, and which local law applies turns on where the building is and how many families live in it. New York City's Housing Maintenance Code sets the city's own habitability standards, including its heat rules, and those belong on the city's own page rather than here. The Multiple Dwelling Law applies of its own force only in cities of three hundred twenty-five thousand or more, though the legislative body of any other city, town or village may adopt it by local law — an adoption that automatically brings articles one through five, ten and eleven, which include the repair and cleanliness duties, while other articles apply only if the local law enumerates them. The Multiple Residence Law covers cities under that population and all towns and villages. Both chapters reach only buildings occupied by three or more families living independently of each other. Article 7-A's tenant receivership programme runs in New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester counties, and its own definition of a dwelling deliberately sweeps in garden-type maisonette projects even where their certificates of occupancy were issued for one- or two-family houses.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, New York Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 29, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/new-york/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

City habitability pages in New York

Notes and caveats

Common questions: New York habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does New York have an implied warranty of habitability?
Statute and a court-recognized implied warranty, each doing independent work. Two sources do independent work. Real Property Law § 235-b implies into every written or oral lease or rental agreement for residential premises a warranty that the premises and the areas within the landlord's control are fit for human habitation, are in a condition matching the uses reasonably intended by the parties, and subject the occupants to no conditions endangering or detrimental to their life, health or safety.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in New York?
No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern. New York states no notice period and no cure window for the warranty. Section 235-b sets neither, and Park West sets neither — the opinion does not discuss tenant notice at all, so nothing in it can be read as imposing one.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in New York?
No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No New York statute authorises a tenant to repair a condition and deduct the cost from rent, and no appellate court has recognised such a right — the only New York decisions stating one are New York City Civil Court decisions from 1971 and 1981, the earlier of which adopted a New Jersey rule four years before § 235-b existed. Park West, the Court of Appeals' own survey of the subject, does not recognise the remedy and expressly declines to comment on the availability of remedies not before it.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in New York?
Yes — at least one lawful path exists — How: withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues; a court or agency escrow program; rent paid into court or a registry as the price of the defense — New York's routes are structurally different from each other and should not be collapsed. First, the warranty itself works defensively: because the tenant's duty to pay rent is coextensive with the landlord's duty to maintain the premises, a tenant may answer a summary nonpayment proceeding by counterclaiming or pleading the breach and taking a percentage reduction of the contracted-for rent as a setoff, or may sue for the money in a plenary action.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in New York?
Protected by a general retaliation statute — One year. Where the landlord acts within a year of the tenant's protected act, retaliation is presumed and the landlord carries the burden of proving a non-retaliatory motive by a preponderance of the evidence. — Real Property Law § 223-b operates as a presumption that shifts the burden onto the landlord: inside the one-year window the landlord must prove a credible non-retaliatory reason for the eviction, the refusal to renew or the change in terms by a preponderance of the evidence.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in New York?
Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page. Section 235-b(2) makes any agreement by a lessee or tenant waiving or modifying the warranty void as contrary to public policy, and the Court of Appeals put the same point in structural terms: because the landlord holds ultimate control of and responsibility for the building, the duty to maintain it is NONDELEGABLE and NONWAIVABLE. New York has no tenant-delegation carve-out of the kind most states write for single-family houses — nothing in § 235-b lets the parties shift repair duties to the tenant by agreement.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading, on the New York State Senate's official law pages, of Real Property Law §§ 235-b, 235-a and 223-b; Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law §§ 755 and 756 and article 7-A (§§ 769, 770, 775, 780, 781, 782 and 783); Multiple Dwelling Law §§ 3, 4, 78, 80 and 302-a, the last read end to end including subdivision 3 paragraphs a through e; and Multiple Residence Law §§ 3, 4, 8, 11, 25 and 174 — with each chapter's own application section read to fix the geographic and building-size boundaries. The majority opinion in Park West Management Corp. v. Mitchell, 47 N.Y.2d 316 (1979), was read in full in the official reporter text.