Hmmm, wonder if the tenants are in breach of contract for not allowing potential renters/buyers in. I haven’t rented in eons, but my recollection is that every lease I signed had a clause allowing the landlord to show the apartment. I think there were conditions, for instance, it could be shown withing 3 months of the end of the lease.

Technically they are probably in breach of contract, but what are you going to do. Here you have to wait until there is at least 3 months of non-payment of rent before you can even initiate any legal recourse , so it could be 6 months to a year before you could get a difficult tenant out of your property. So a breach like this is completely meaningless if you have a certain type of tenant--they can make your life very difficult if they want.

(And Manhattan is even worse. I know of a story where a roomate of the owner of the property got a protection order against the owner for attempting to evict him, who was subsequently not allowed in her own condo, and lost the property as a result). Many thing are predicated upon both parties being reasonable people. Which it seems there may be diminishing numbers of.

We are buying a property for a particular reason, not because we are necessarily looking forward to being landlords in general.

It seems to me the laws to protect the tenants went way to the left of center.

I'm not saying there wasn't a need, I'm saying common sense didn't prevail.

My condolences. I would not want to be a landlord and have to rent to bratty Penn students who will show no respect for your unit or property. Sounds awful.

How can your realtor guide you better so as to avoid these situations? Their commission depends on finding places to show you. Seems they would have figured something out so as to have units to show.

Sadly, tenants have more rights than landlords. Eviction is a slow process.

Not being able to see a unit, especially after multiple appointments, is frustrating.

We won't be renting this to random people. We are buying a rental property for a specific purpose and will consider selling it when it is no longer needed. However most grad students are probably pretty reliable tenants overall, particularly the ones who can rent in a doorman building. Some of them are a little spoiled maybe, but they are not necessarily irresponsible tenants.

Meanwhile many full adult career people love the buildings and apparently have no problem using a building laundry room.

I rented in more than one luxury Manhattan building and did not have in-unit laundry. But I did not do my own laundry, my cleaning person did. That is why people may not care.

Not only is it hard in some states to evict renters, it can be very hard to foreclose. The ease of doing so varies by state, part of the reason that mortgage rates are higher in some states than others. We usually are not involved in individual mortgage loans, but in one case we had one in our portfolio and it was a running joke how the homeowner, a physician no less, abused the system (NY state) to avoid paying for years and years. It was at least 5 years where he did not pay.

Does the name of the building start with a D?

My experience, the tenant is given 24 hours notice, per their contract, that the property is being shown, then the PM uses their key to let themselves in. There was ONE property we were interested in, a highly sought after neighborhood with very few homes for sale. The tenant was "afraid" of seeing other people, he was a shut-in who received services. It was listed as "sight-unseen, a no admittance listing. They mentioned there was a sewer problem, didn't say what it was or what was the issue...it needed a new roof...and several other disfunctional things...it had immediate full price offers and sold.