If your Queens property has open HPD violations — whether Class A, Class B, or Class C — you may be wondering whether you can still sell it. The short answer is yes. HPD violations do not prevent a property from being sold. Here is what you need to know.
The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) issues violations against properties that fail to meet the city's Housing Maintenance Code. Violations are classified by severity:
Class A (Non-Hazardous) — Maintenance issues that are not immediately dangerous, such as peeling paint in common areas or minor plumbing deficiencies. These typically have 90 days to be corrected.
Class B (Hazardous) — Conditions that are hazardous to health or safety, such as inadequate heating, lead paint, or rodent infestations. These typically have 30 days to be corrected.
Class C (Immediately Hazardous) — Serious, immediately dangerous conditions such as no heat in winter, broken locks on entry doors, gas leaks, or exposed wiring. These require correction within 24 hours to 21 days.
No. There is no law in New York City that prevents a property from being sold because of open HPD violations. When a property is sold, the violations transfer to the new owner, who then becomes responsible for curing them. The key is disclosure — as the seller, you must disclose known violations to the buyer. A title search will surface open violations anyway, so there is no benefit to concealing them.
Traditional buyers — those using bank financing — may walk away from a property with significant Class C violations because their lender will not approve the mortgage until violations are cured. This is the main practical obstacle for sellers with heavy violation loads.
Cash buyers, particularly real estate investors, purchase properties with open violations regularly. They factor the cost of curing violations into their offer and take responsibility for resolving them after closing. You do not need to make any repairs before the sale.
If HPD sent contractors to your property to make emergency repairs because you failed to do so, those charges are billed to you through the Department of Finance and added to your property tax bill. If unpaid, they become a tax lien. These charges must be disclosed and will be identified in a title search. A cash buyer who purchases the property will pay them off at closing from the sale proceeds, along with any other liens.
Properties in Queens with 10, 20, or even 50+ open violations are bought and sold regularly. Many of these are older 2 and 3 family homes where the owner has deferred maintenance for years, cannot afford to make repairs, and simply wants to move on. If this is your situation, selling as-is to a cash buyer is the most practical path. You avoid the cost of repairs, the time of listing, and the complexity of managing a property under city pressure.
Check your property's open violations for free at hpdonline.hpdnyc.org. If you have significant violations on your Queens property and want to understand what a cash sale would look like, call or text Rick at RosenJacob RS: (212) 602-1515. We buy properties with violations all the time — it is not a problem for us.