ALBANY — New York Attorney General Letitia James may have paid thousands of dollars less in mortgage and insurance fees as a result of listing a multi-family residence she owns in Brooklyn as having four units and not five, according to building and financial records filed over the past 24 years.
Her office has asserted that James has always maintained the residential property as an owner-occupied, four-family residence since she purchased it in February 2001. And in an interview with NY1 last week, James said the recent allegations that she may have misrepresented the property’s occupancy rating in various mortgage and insurance documents for financial gain are “baseless.”
A certificate of occupancy issued for the property on Jan. 26, 2001, indicates the residence on Lafayette Avenue has at times had five units, including a “two-family” residence on the top floor. Less than three weeks after that certificate was filed, James purchased the property and obtained a $480,000 mortgage, which included an insurance rider that listed the property as having four units or less…