NYC Real Estate Litigation Lawyer

Mistakes in NYC real estate are often quite expensive. A vague easement clause, a missed cure period, a contractor lien filed while you were negotiating the next deal can all cost you thousands. By the time a problem is obvious, your leverage is usually gone.

We represent property owners, developers, and investors across New York in contract disputes, closings, construction litigation, landlord-tenant matters, and partition actions. Some of that work is litigation: enforcing a purchase agreement, fighting a lien, and unwinding a deal that went sideways.

After decades of handling New York real estate matters, we know which problems settle in a phone call and which ones only respond to a filed complaint. Contact us for a free consultation.

Real Estate Disputes We Can Help With

Real Estate Contracts

The same contract that could have saved you is often the one that traps you. Financing collapses after the contingency date has passed, a seller accepts a better offer and refuses to close, or an inspection turns up a title cloud that neither side accounted for.

Whether a party has failed to meet their obligations to amount to a breach of contract usually comes down to the language on deadlines, notices, and obligations.

Partition Actions

Co-owners do not need each other’s permission to get out. A tenant in common or joint tenant who wants to end the partnership can ask a court to divide the property, and the other owners cannot simply refuse. The real question is how that division happens. Most partition actions end in a court-ordered sale with the proceeds split.

Before anything is split, the court can account for what each owner actually put in, including mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, and repairs one owner covered alone. Inherited property is where this comes up most, usually among siblings who agree on nothing except that the arrangement cannot continue.

Quiet Title Actions

You can hold the keys, pay the taxes, and even live in the property for twenty years and still not have a clean title.

A mortgage that was paid off but never discharged. A break in the chain of deeds. A claim from an heir nobody accounted for. The practical effect shows up at the closing table, when a title insurer refuses to insure and the sale or refinancing stops. 

Quiet title actions name everyone who might hold a claim, and the resulting judgment declares who owns the property and is recorded so the title is clean going forward. The same proceeding can settle what someone else is entitled to do on the land, including easements and rights claimed through long use.

Condominium and Cooperative Association Disputes

A co-op purchase isn’t technically a real estate purchase. You’re buying stock in a corporation and a proprietary lease. A condominium unit is real property with an interest in the common elements and governed by the declaration and bylaws.

Courts give co-op boards wide room under the business judgment rule, so a decision made in good faith and within the board’s authority is usually left alone even when the reasoning is never explained.

Disputes with condominiums and cooperative associations involve common charges and special assessments, change and sublet approvals, the line between what the building maintains and what the unit owner does, and the point where a board’s decision stops being protected.

Commercial and Residential Real Estate Litigation

A commercial dispute usually means two sophisticated parties, a heavily negotiated contract, and a court willing to hold both of them to the words they agreed on.

The pressure comes from what the building is producing while the case sits, because rent, a tenant’s operations, a construction schedule, and a lender’s deadlines all keep running.

Protecting your position often means protecting the business interests attached to it.

Residential disputes often involve a party who didn’t draft anything, and protections that exist for that reason. Disclosure obligations, habitability standards, and limits on what a board or landlord may do apply where they would not between two commercial parties. The underlying issues still overlap: contract terms, construction-related issues, boundaries, and the terms of occupancy.

Property Disputes

Most property disputes come down to where the boundary line actually sits and what someone else is allowed to do on your side of it.

Easements: An easement is a right to use someone else’s property for a specific purpose, and it may not show in either deed.

Rights created by long and open use, or implied when a single parcel was split, bind later buyers who never agreed to them. Fights over easements usually concern whether the right exists at all, how far it reaches, and whether the use has grown beyond what was originally granted.

Encroachments: An encroachment is a structure that crosses the line, such as a wall, fence, garage, cornice, fire escape, or sidewalk vault.

What happens next depends on how far it intrudes and how long it has been there. Encroachments may be resolved with an agreement or a recorded easement rather than removal, but a court may also require it to come down.

Variance: A variance is permission to use land in a way the zoning resolution does not allow.

• A use variance requires showing the property cannot make a reasonable return as zoned, proven with financial evidence.
• An area variance covers height, setback, or lot coverage and is decided on a balancing test that weighs the benefit to the owner against the effect on the neighborhood.

Property owners have the legal right to formally object to an application, and they can also fight the decision in court or through an appeal even after it’s been approved.

Nuisance & Trespass Claims: Trespass is an unauthorized physical entry onto property. Nuisance is interference with the use and enjoyment of it, covering noise, odors, water, dust, and debris crossing from one property to another.

A trespass can be established without showing harm, while a nuisance claim turns on whether the interference is both substantial and unreasonable.

Injunctive Relief: An injunction is a court order to stop someone from doing something, used when money can’t fix the damage. To get one early, before the case is over, you must show three things: you’re likely to win, the harm would be permanent if it happens, and stopping them hurts them less than not stopping them hurts you.

These are useful when there’s demolition already underway, a wall going up over the line, or a use about to change the property permanently. In these cases, the timing of the request matters more than the strength of the claim.

Boundary Disputes: Boundary disputes start when the deed description, the survey, and what is on the ground disagree.

Old descriptions referencing monuments that no longer exist, fences set for convenience rather than accuracy, and successive surveys that do not match.

If someone occupies land past their property line and uses it openly for long enough, they may have grounds for an adverse possession claim.

Property Damage and Insurance Disputes

There are two ways to approach property damage:

• A claim against your own insurer, governed by what the policy covers, what it excludes, the notice, proof of loss the carrier requires, and the deadline the policy sets for suing.
• A claim against whoever caused the damage, a contractor excavating next door or an upstairs neighbor whose pipe failed, is a negligence case with its own proof and timeline.

Both can be filed at the same time. Insurers routinely pursue the responsible party after paying, and a payment that falls short of the actual loss does not necessarily end the claim against the party at fault.

Where a carrier delays, undervalues, or denies without a reasonable basis, disagreements with insurance companies become a dispute about how the claim was handled rather than about the damage itself.

Mechanics’ Liens

A mechanic’s lien is a claim filed against real property by a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier who was not paid for labor or materials that went into the work.

Once filed, it attaches to the property itself, so the owner cannot sell, mortgage, or refinance without dealing with it first.

Liens must be filed within a set period after the last work was performed, and they expire unless extended or foreclosed.

Lease Disputes

Commercial leases are enforced close to the words on the page, and the deadlines are unforgiving. A tenant served with a notice to cure has a narrow window to act, because once the cure period lapses, the landlord can terminate and the tenant is left fighting an eviction rather than saving the lease.

New York courts will stop that clock while the dispute is decided through a Yellowstone injunction, but the request must be made before the cure period runs out.

When a tenant wants to move out early or hand the place to someone else, three things usually turn into fights: whether they get their security deposit back, whether they owe extra rent for staying past the lease’s end date (holdover), and whether the landlord will approve a subletter or someone taking over the lease.

Failure to Disclose Property Defects

New York does not put a general duty on a seller to volunteer everything wrong with a property. Sellers of one- to four-family homes answer a statutory disclosure form before the contract is signed, and the law does not require them to inspect or investigate first, which is why an honest answer of “unknown” is very common.

Claims after closing tend to rest on active concealment decidedly known before the deal was closed. Material defects that were deliberately hidden, including structural problems, environmental hazards, and open violations, may lead to legal disputes.

Breach of Duty

Agents, brokers, and property managers owe fiduciary duty to those who hire them. Undivided loyalty to the client, disclosure of anything material they know, and honest accounting for money they hold are at the core.

A breach of fiduciary duty claim can cost the broker the commission, whether or not the client can point to a dollar loss, because the compensation was earned on the assumption of loyalty. Undisclosed self-dealing, offers that were never presented, and escrow money mixed with the firm’s own funds are common reasons for real estate claims.

Disagreements Between Investors and Real Estate LLC or Holding Company

Real estate is usually held through LLCs, joint ventures, or holding companies, and the operating agreement, not the deed, decides what each investor is actually entitled to.

Disputes between investors often start when distributions stop while management fees continue, when a capital call arrives that a member cannot meet and dilution follows, or when whoever controls the entity pushes through a sale or refinancing.

How much power a member of an LLC has in a dispute depends on what the original agreement says. This includes how many votes it takes to make decisions, whether there’s a process for one member to buy out another, limits on selling your stake, and the right to review the company’s financial records.

If the agreement doesn’t address the problem at hand or the members are stuck, New York courts can dissolve the company when it can’t operate as intended.

Contact a New York Real Estate Lawyer

Real estate disputes in New York rarely stay in one lane. A boundary problem turns into a title problem. A lease default reaches the principal who signed the guaranty. A damage claim runs against an insurer and a contractor at the same time.

Most of these matters run on tight deadlines, so contacting a real estate attorney as soon as possible is always the best first step to resolve disputes. Contact us today for a free consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a NYC real estate lawyer do?

In New York, you need a lawyer to buy or sell property. The lawyers (not the real estate agents) write and negotiate the purchase contract, then handle everything up to closing: checking that the seller actually owns the property free and clear, reviewing the survey, and fixing any title problems.

Lawsuits are a separate part of the job: broken contracts, fights over property lines or shared access, ending leases, liens, defects the seller hid, and construction termination or abandonment.

A firm that handles both the deal side and the lawsuit side can tell you when a problem shows up before closing, whether it’s a dealbreaker or something you can work around and still close.

The seller marked “unknown” on the disclosure form, and I found defects after closing. Can I still bring a claim?

You may still have a claim, though it will likely rest on something other than the form.  Under Real Property Law § 465, a seller is liable under the Act only for a willful failure to meet its requirements, but that same section preserves every other remedy available at law or in equity, which is where claims built on active concealment generally live. An “as is” clause does not automatically end the matter, and condominium units and cooperative apartments sit outside the disclosure form altogether.

What should a real estate partnership agreement cover before I sign it?

The provisions that matter include who can force a sale and how much notice they must give. How a buyout price gets set, whether by appraisal, by formula, or by a shotgun clause that lets one side name a number, and the other choose which end of it to take. What follows when a partner cannot fund a capital call. Who signs the mortgage and who guarantees it personally. Where the agreement is silent, a disagreement years later gets settled by a court applying default rules, which costs more than the clause nobody wanted to negotiate at the start.

My neighbor’s contractor wants to put scaffolding on my property. Do I have to allow it?

You are not required to grant access on request, but a court may order it if you refuse and the work cannot reasonably be done any other way. They may bring a special proceeding for a license, and more than one written notice sent by certified mail that goes unanswered for sixty days counts as a refusal. When a license is granted, the court sets the terms, which is why it can be beneficial to negotiate on your own terms.

A subcontractor filed a mechanics’ lien on my property even though I paid the general contractor in full. What are my options?

Paying your general contractor does not automatically void a subcontractor’s lien, though it may limit what that subcontractor can recover from you. If the lien is holding up a sale or a refinancing, you may be able to bond it off at 110 percent of the claimed amount or move for summary discharge where the notice is defective on its face. See a mechanic’s lien attorney to evaluate your case.