I am a small property owner and lifelong Syracuse resident, and I want to tell you what happened when the city came to inspect my building for my Certificate of Compliance recently.
The inspector walked through, told me I had passed, and said mine was “the best building [he had] seen.” A few hours later, he called back. He had forgotten to mention that my ZIP code requires a separate lead test in addition to the standard compliance inspection. That test — which was never mentioned on the city’s application portal or in the codes “violation” notice I received in the mail — cost me $650 for a single unit. I still do not know what Onondaga County’s separate Lead Safe NY inspection will cost, because I have not been contacted by the county Department of Health yet, but I’m sure their visit will not be without its own set of fees.
One week before that inspector came, I had renewed my tenant’s lease with no rent increase, as I have done for three renewals in a row, because there was no reason to raise it. Had anyone told me about these fees in advance, I would have raised the rent by about $60 a month to cover them. Instead, I found out after the lease was already offered to the tenant…