2023 was an amazing year, thanks to our clients! But don’t take our word for it. Hear what the Jaffa clients have to say about 2023. We thank all our clients for their business and 2023 and look forward to what 2024 will bring. Happy New Year, and thank you for your business!

 

Why You Should Be Digitizing Your Inspection Process

New York City is notorious for its rigorous compliance landscape. With frequent audits and strict regulations governing what seems like almost every aspect of property management, navigating these compliance requirements can be a daunting task for property owners and managers, often leading to headaches, stress, and, most painfully, violations. However, embracing digital solutions like the Jaffa deFINEd app can offer a transformative approach to compliance management, revolutionizing operations while ensuring adherence to NYC’s complex regulatory environment.

In addition, the high frequency of audits in NYC underscores the importance of digitizing your compliance management, as traditional manual processes are time-intensive and susceptible to errors and delays, putting properties at risk of non-compliance and penalties. By adopting the Jaffa deFINEd app, property owners and managers can proactively address these challenges, reducing the likelihood of mistakes and streamlining their compliance efforts.

Digitization brings several key advantages, particularly in the context of audits.

1. Seamless Audit Preparation: The Jaffa deFINEd app centralizes compliance-related data, documentation, and tasks, facilitating comprehensive audit preparation. Property owners and managers can easily access and present the necessary information during audits, reducing the stress and time required to compile and submit physical documents.
2. Document Management: The Jaffa deFINEd app facilitates seamless document management by allowing property owners and managers to capture, upload, and store photos, signatures, and files directly within the app. This feature eliminates the need for physical paperwork, making documentation easily accessible during audits and inspections.
3. Accurate and Transparent Reporting: Digitizing compliance management ensures accurate and transparent reporting. The app’s robust record-keeping capabilities maintain precise compliance records, eliminating discrepancies and providing an audit trail for regulatory authorities.
4. Real-time Collaboration: The app promotes real-time collaboration among in-office and in-field team members. Property owners or management companies, on-site managers, inspectors, and contractors can communicate, share updates, and collaborate on compliance-related tasks, ensuring streamlined operations and efficient decision-making.
5. Proactive Compliance Monitoring: The Jaffa deFINEd app’s automated reminders and notifications are crucial in staying ahead of compliance requirements. Property owners and managers receive real-time alerts for upcoming inspections, certifications, or renewal deadlines, reducing the risk of missed deadlines and non-compliance issues that could trigger audits.
6. Multilingual Support: NYC is a diverse city with a multicultural workforce. The Jaffa deFINEd app offers multilingual support, ensuring employees from different linguistic backgrounds can effectively use and navigate the app. App users can choose English, Spanish, Albanian, and Russian, making it accessible to everyone on your team. Clear communication in their preferred language fosters understanding and improves compliance management across the board.
7. Remote Access and Data Sync: The app allows property owners and managers to access compliance data anytime, anywhere, through secure remote access. Real-time data sync ensures that all team members are working with the most updated information, enhancing collaboration and streamlining compliance management processes.
8. Complete overview of your portfolio: The Jaffa deFINEd dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of all your buildings, upcoming deadlines, tasks, upcoming HPD violations, ECB hearings, and open corrections, so you’re always confident of the status of any of your properties.
9. Geo-location Verification: The app incorporates geo-location verification, enabling property owners and managers to validate inspections and document their occurrence at specific locations. This feature adds an extra layer of accuracy and accountability, enhancing the integrity of compliance management.

 

But the Jaffa deFINEd app is about more than just inter-team communication and staying ahead of your audits. Its complete set of features allows for in-app compliance task completion. That’s right! Those pesky tasks that used to involve hours of work and mountains of paperwork you can now do with a few clicks of a button on your phone.

1. Customizable Inspections with Automated Recurring Inspections: The Jaffa deFINEd app allows you to schedule, perform, and track inspections directly on your phone. It also offers customizable inspection templates, empowering property owners and managers to tailor inspections to their specific compliance requirements. And with the ability to combine inspections and automate recurring inspections, keeping up with all your required and preventative inspections has never been easier.
2. Work Orders Management: With the app’s streamlined work order management feature, property owners and managers can easily assign tasks, track progress, and communicate with their team members who are completing work orders. This automated system ensures that compliance-related work orders are efficiently executed, reducing the chances of errors and delays and ultimately contributing to overall compliance.
3. Safety Mailing Processing: For NYC property owners and managers, safety mailings are a tedious task they must complete once a year. And if the initial job of sending out these mailings isn’t annoying enough, chasing after tenants for their responses makes this one task we all genuinely dread. The Jaffa deFINEd app allows for in-app responses, making it easy to both record your attempts (in the case of those aforementioned audits) and get your tenants’ responses.
4. In-App Support: Because we all need some help sometimes, the Jaffa deFINEd app offers plenty of that. Featuring a complete help section with resources for the NYC property owner or manager, the ability to view open violations on BIS, and an Ask-a-Question button to ask a Jaffa representative your compliance questions, the Jaffa deFINEd makes it easy to get you the help you need. You can even hire Jaffa to resolve your violations for you directly in the app.

 

As NYC property owners and managers continue to be inundated with NYC’s high audit frequency and stringent regulations, the Jaffa deFINEd app has emerged as a powerful and revolutionizing tool. Embracing digital solutions is the key to simplifying NYC property compliance, and through digitizing compliance processes, property owners and managers can focus on delivering exceptional property management services while ensuring full compliance with NYC’s ever-evolving requirements. As NYC’s compliance landscape continues to evolve, adopting digital solutions like the Jaffa deFINEd app is a strategic investment that paves the way for efficient compliance management and success in the property management industry.

Q: Is my permit at risk of being revoked because of LL160?

JA:  Yes. Local Law 160 of 2017 states that the DOB will now revoke active permits for buildings whose owners owe $25,000 or more in covered arrears to the City.  The DOB will also deny new permits for building owners who fit this criterion.

There are several notable exceptions to the law, including the following:

• The applicant submits a certification from the DOF that binding agreements requiring payment of all covered arrears owed by the property owners are in place and that the owners are in compliance with this agreement.
• The requested permit is necessary to correct an outstanding code violation that the commissioner deems necessary for public health and safety.
• The permit is requested for a portion of a property that is occupied by a tenant who is not responsible for the covered arrears with respect to the property.
• The permit is requested for a dwelling unit within a property that is owned by a condominium or held by a shareholder of a cooperative corporation under a proprietary lease and the owners of the unit do not owe a collective $25,000 or more in covered arrears to the city.
• The permit is requested for a property that was the subject of an in-rem foreclosure judgment in favor of the city and was consequently transferred to a third party.
• The permit is requested for a property that is the subject of a court order in a case brought by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
• The permit is requested for a property that is the subject of a loan provided by or through the Department of Housing Preservation and Development or the New York City Housing Development Corporation for the purpose of rehabilitation.
• The permit is necessary for participation in a program that involves rehabilitation of the property as deemed by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development or the New York City Housing Development Corporation.

For more information about how LL160 can affect your permit status you can read our blog on the topic.

The DOB’s recently made a total of 26 changes for small businesses as part of an executive order to help NY’s small businesses recover from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. All new changes take effect on Nov. 20, 2022. As a NYC building owner, you’ll need to know about these changes to the NYC compliance code so you can avoid getting slapped with a violations and incurring a penalty. No worries, though; we’ve done the legwork so you don’t have to. Here’s what you need to know about the recent DOB changes.

Who do these changes affect?

The DOB’s recent changes apply to small businesses. Small businesses, as defined by the DOB, generally refer to businesses that employ fewer than 100 workers. However, in regards to specific requirements and regulations, the definition expands to include more kinds of businesses. As we explore the recent DOB reforms, we’ll note the exact criteria for businesses to which each DOB change applies.

Changes to violation enforcement

As part of the recent changes, the City extended the cure period for all Class 2 (Major) and Class 3 (Lesser) violations from 40 days to 60 days from the date of NOV service. This change will provide more time for named respondents to submit a Certificate of Corrections (COC) and avoid getting hit with a penalty or hearing.

It’s important to note that this change does not apply to Class 1 violations, in which a COC must be submitted immediately. In addition, Aggravated I and Aggravated II penalties are never eligible for a cure.

The DOB will eliminate the following violations:

• Approved Place of Assembly plans not available for inspection (Class 2)
• Failure to conspicuously post electrical work permit while work is in progress (Class 3)
• Place of Assembly contrary to Approved construction documents (Class 2)
• Electrical closet not dedicated to electrical distribution equipment only (Class 2 and 3)
• Failure to provide cover/faceplate/lampholder/luminaire canopy for electrical outlet (Class 2)

The DOB is reducing penalties for the following violations:

• Electrical work without a permit (Class 3)
• Work without a permit (Class 3)
• Failure to post or properly post permit for work at premises (Class 2)
• Change in occupancy/use of C of O as per §28-118.3.1 – §28-118.3.2 by operating a Place of Assembly as per when current C of O does not allow such occupancy (Class 2)
• Luminaires and Lampholders not installed in an approved manner (Class 2)

Most penalty reductions are 50% or more.

There are no qualifiers for differently-sized business in regards to the above in the DOB’s notice. Also, all language extending the cure period for one- or two-family homes have been removed. It is therefore assumed that these changes apply to all named respondents.

Civil penalties for work without a permit

Small businesses may be granted a waiver of civil penalties for work without a permit after demonstrating (as per the DOB’s requirements) that they are a small business. The DOB specifies here that a small business refers to a business that employs fewer than one hundred employees.

High-pressure and low-pressure boilers

Small businesses may now be granted a first-time waiver of penalties for failure to file an annual boiler inspection report for both low-pressure and high-pressure boilers. These penalties are typically seen in the form of LBLVIO and HBLVIO violations, as issued by the DOB.

The penalty waiver applies to small businesses that employ fewer than one hundred employees. Owners can take advantage of the penalty waiver by demonstrating, in the manner specified by the DOB, that they are the owner of the business.

Don’t forget—annual boiler inspections are due by Dec. 31 each year.

There are lots of changes detailed here, but all of them were established to help your business recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the full update on the DOB reforms here.

If you’re still confused about what you need to know, we can help. We’re always happy to work with you and make sense of NYC’s compliance code. Don’t hesitate to contact us today.