Your building

On 2026-07-08, Ben and Claude pulled every public NYC record tied to 251 Kane St — city planning data, HPD/DOB/ECB violation and complaint histories, deed records, and the state's rent-stabilization building lists. Here's what came back. All of this is public information; none of it is legal advice.

Building basics

Built 1894, 5 floors, 12 residential units, Class C1 (walk-up apartment), in the Cobble Hill Historic District.

GeoSearch query: https://geosearch.planninglabs.nyc/v2/search?text=251+Kane+St+Brooklyn+NY+11231&size=1 BBL/BIN confirmed independently by HPD registration (block=312, lot=38, bin=3003543), DOB/ECB violations (bin=3003543), OATH hearings (block_no=00312, lot_no=0038), ACRIS legals (borough=3, block=312, lot=38), and the DHCR building list (block=312, lot=38). All agree.

Rent-stabilization threshold test

Built 1894 (well before 1974) with 12 residential units (well above the 6-unit minimum), Class C1 walk-up. This building meets the standard NYC rent-stabilization coverage test on its face, independent of any DHCR registration. See §6 for direct DHCR confirmation.

Stabilization coverage

Sources: 2024 and 2020 NYS HCR Building Registration Files for Brooklyn, published via NYC Rent Guidelines Board.

251 Kane Street (Block 312, Lot 38) appears on BOTH the 2020 and 2024 DHCR Brooklyn building lists, each time listed as "MULTIPLE DWELLING A" with no coop/condo overlay or exemption annotation:

2024: 11231   251   KANE   ST   BROOKLYN   61   MULTIPLE DWELLING A   312   38
2020: 11231   251   KANE   ST   BROOKLYN   61   MULTIPLE DWELLING A   312   38

Unlike the 180 Prospect Pl comparison building (which dropped off the 2020 list and only reappeared in 2024), 251 Kane St shows continuous, uninterrupted DHCR registration across both snapshots — a materially stronger and cleaner rent-stabilization signal than in the prior case. This directly corroborates the "suspected rent-stabilized studio" premise for the building as a whole. It does not by itself confirm Apt 4 specifically is stabilized (DHCR's per-apartment registration/rent-history data, i.e., the individual apartment's Form FL/DR-1.0 or equivalent, would need to be requested from DHCR directly — that data source is not exposed via the Socrata APIs used here, same limitation noted in the 180 Prospect Pl precedent).

The zero-permits finding

dob-permit-issuance.json and dob-job-filings.json both return zero records for this BIN — not "old, no recent activity" but completely empty across the entire digitized DOB history, and DOB NOW (post-2016 digital system) is likewise empty. Combined with PLUTO's yearalter1=1990 (an alteration recorded in PLUTO's own field, predating DOB's searchable permit database) and the 2021 unpermitted-work complaint (§5), this building has no verifiable, permitted renovation history in any NYC public database despite at least one recorded alteration year and at least one work-without-permit complaint. If Claire's unit (Apt 4) shows signs of a post-1974-style renovation (new kitchen/bath, individual apartment improvements) that the landlord might cite to justify a higher legal rent or claim deregulation-by-improvement, there is no permit on file to support that claim — this is analogous to, and arguably stronger than, the 180 Prospect Pl finding ("permits filed 2005, none after despite renovations ~2018–19").

Ownership & deed chain

Current Owner of Record

251 KANE STREET LLC — confirmed by PLUTO ownername, HPD registration (CorporateOwner), and the 2018 ACRIS deed (see chain below).

HPD Registration (registrationid 303352, buildingid 318785)

• Corporate Owner: 251 KANE STREET LLC, 195 Hicks St Apt A1, Brooklyn NY 11201
• Agent: JOSEPHINE OWEN, 195 Hicks St, Brooklyn NY 11201
• Head Officer / President: MARCIA A. OWEN, 195 Hicks St Apt A1, Brooklyn NY 11201
• Site Manager: RICHARD YOUNGER (no business address listed)
• Last registration date: 2025-08-29; registration expires: 2026-09-01 — currently registered/active.

Note on the landlord contact given for this task ("Joseph R. Owen," "Owen Realty," 195 Hicks St 1A, rob@owenrei.com): The registered address (195 Hicks St, Apt A1) matches exactly. The registered *names*, however, are Josephine Owen (Agent) and Marcia A. Owen (Head Officer/President) — not "Joseph R. Owen." A Joseph Owen does appear as an Officer/HeadOfficer on several sibling entities in the same portfolio (see §4) and as the pre-2018 individual deed-holder ("Owen, Joseph C Jr" — note middle initial C, not R). This is close enough (same building, same street address, same surname, same small family real-estate operation) that "Joseph" is almost certainly part of the same family group, but the "R." initial and "Owen Realty"/"OwenREI.com" business name were not independently corroborated in any NYC public dataset queried here — flag for a NY Secretary of State entity search if the exact legal identity of "Joseph R. Owen" / "Owen Realty LLC" matters (e.g., for identifying the correct defendant/respondent).

ACRIS Ownership Chain (dataset 8h5j-fqxa legals + 636b-3b5g parties + bnx9-e6tj master)

The chain traces back to 1966 but the operative history for this case starts in 1987:

• 1966: Duffy Robert & Barbara → Newbliss Realty Corp (deed) → Madcat Realty Corp (deed, same year)
• 1968–1970: Series of mortgages between Madcat Realty Corp and Sackman Gilliland Corp / Kingston Savings Bank / Thomas Izzo — routine financing activity, no ownership change
• 1987-08-14: DEED — Madcat Realty Corp → OWEN, JOSEPH C JR (individual). This is the start of Owen-family ownership, 39 years before this pull.
• 1987–2014: A long sequence of mortgages, assignments, agreements, satisfactions, and releases, all naming Joseph C. Owen Jr. individually (sometimes jointly with entities named 8282 Realty Corp, 23871 Realty Corp, 11967 Realty Corp — the same numbered-shell-entity names that recur across the Owen portfolio, see §4) and various lenders (Home Savings Bank, Carver Federal Savings Bank, HSBC Bank USA, Washington Mutual Bank → JPMorgan Chase as successor, Apple Bank for Savings). No dollar-amount deed sale occurs in this window — these are all financing instruments on the same continuously-held property.
• Notable mortgage amounts: $1,050,000 (undated, Home Savs Bank), $2,640,000 (2007-08-24, Washington Mutual Bank), $400,000 + $1,400,000 agreement (2009-02-06, Apple Bank), $100,000 + $1,500,000 agreement (2014-04-29, Apple Bank).
• 2018-04-15: DEED — Joseph C. Owen Jr. → 251 KANE STREET LLC. No sale amount recorded (document_amt: 0) — consistent with an intra-family/estate-planning transfer into a single-purpose LLC, not an arm's-length sale.
• 2018-08-22: Same-day mortgage assumption/consolidation package (AL&R + MTGE + AGMT, all $1,500,000 / $136,020.89) between 251 Kane Street LLC and Apple Bank for Savings — i.e., the existing Apple Bank debt was carried over to the new LLC.
• No deed transfer or new financing recorded since 2018. 251 Kane Street LLC has been the continuous record owner since April 2018; Joseph C. Owen Jr. (individually) held it for the 31 years before that.

Cross-validation: OATH sanitation-summons respondents track this exact transition — tickets from 2001, 2002, 2008, and 2017 (pre-transfer) name "OWEN JR"/"OWEN JR JOSEPH" as respondent; every ticket from 2018 onward names "251 KANE STREET LLC"/"251 KANE ST LLC." The entity switch in the OATH data lines up precisely with the 2018-04-15 ACRIS deed date.

Conclusion: 251 Kane Street LLC is the owner of record since April 2018, controlled by the Owen family (Marcia A. Owen as President, Josephine Owen as Agent), successor to 31 years of individual ownership by Joseph C. Owen Jr. This is a small, long-held family-portfolio building, not a recently-acquired flip or a large corporate landlord.

The Owen portfolio

Sources: HPD Registration Contacts searched three ways — by business address (195 Hicks St), by surname (OWEN), and by corporation name (containing "OWEN") — then deduplicated to 41 unique HPD registration IDs and resolved to addresses via owen-portfolio-registrations.json.

Caution: the surname/corp-name searches pull in many unrelated false positives citywide (different people named Owen, "OWENERS CORP" as a misspelling of "OWNERS CORP," a Bronx street literally named "McOwen Avenue," etc. — see retrieval-log.md notes). Cross-validating against entity names that also appear in the 251 Kane St ACRIS deed chain (11967 Realty Corp, 23871 Realty Corp, 8282 Realty Corp, EmmJay Associates, Montague Realty Development Associates) narrows this to a confirmed portfolio of 11 buildings, all registered from 195 Hicks Street, all in Brooklyn Heights / Cobble Hill / Boerum Hill, run by Marcia Owen / Josephine Owen / Joseph Owen:

This is a classic small multi-generational family real-estate operation using single-purpose LLCs per building — 10 other buildings besides 251 Kane St, all within a few blocks of each other in brownstone Brooklyn. Useful if Claire (or her lawyer) wants comparables for how this landlord treats rent-stabilized tenants elsewhere, or wants to check whether any of these other buildings have more active violation/complaint/litigation histories than 251 Kane St.

*(Several other "OWEN"-named registrations — e.g., 401/403/395 Henry St under a "John Owen" at unrelated business addresses, "413 West 57th St" under a "Joseph Owen" at 6 East 39th St — were excluded as likely-unrelated same-surname coincidences; not confirmed either way.)*

Violations & complaints history

Source: data/public-records/hpd-violations.json (88 records, dataset wvxf-dwi5, BIN 3003543)

Summary by Class

By Status

• VIOLATION CLOSED: 73
• VIOLATION DISMISSED: 14
• NOT COMPLIED WITH: 1 (a single 1991 boiler-room ceiling repair item, long stale)

By Year

Almost the entire history clusters in 1986–1994 (67 of 88 violations) and a smaller cluster in 2013, 2015–16, 2018, 2021 (23 violations). Nothing after 2021. No open/active violations currently on record.

Apartment-level detail

Violations naming a specific apartment: Apt 1 (3), Apt 3 (16), Apt 5 (1), Apt 6 (5), Apt 7 (11), Apt 10 (5), Apt 12 (5); 42 have no apartment listed (building-wide items, mostly the 1986–94 cluster). No violation in this dataset names Apt 4.

Notable items

• Two Class I violations (2015-10-09, 2016-11-10), both dismissed: "OWNER FAILED TO FILE A VALID REGISTRATION STATEMENT" (§27-2107) — the building briefly lapsed on HPD registration twice in the mid-2010s, both resolved.
• No open rent-stabilization-notice-posting violations (unlike the 180 Prospect Pl comparison building, which had three open 2026 violations of this type). This building's HPD violation record does not itself corroborate or undermine rent-stabilization status either way.

Source: data/public-records/hpd-complaints-problems.json (24 records, dataset ygpa-z7cr, building_id 318785) Date range: 2003-10-24 to 2015-03-07 — nothing in the last ~11 years.

By Category

Notable cluster: 2013-12-04, Apt 7 — a single filing generated 13 separate problem records (radiator, vermin, wall paint/plaster, mold, floor, heat-plant), all closed. This is the single largest complaint episode in the building's history, but it is Apt 7, not Apt 4, and over a decade old.

No litigation: hpd-litigation.json returned 0 records — this building has never been the subject of an HPD housing-court case.

Bottom line

Strengthens the claim:

• Building meets the standard coverage test outright (built 1894, 12 units, Class C1).
• Confirmed on both the 2020 and 2024 DHCR building lists, with no gap — cleaner than the precedent case.
• Zero DOB permits or job filings in the building's entire digitized history — any claimed individual-apartment-improvement basis for a higher rent in Apt 4 (or any unit) has no permit paper trail to support it.
• A 2021 DOB "work without a permit" complaint (category 7J) with no matching permit anywhere on file.
• No HPD litigation, no open violations, no rent-stabilization-notice violations — this cuts against a "chronic bad actor" narrative but doesn't help or hurt the stabilization-status question itself.

Weakens / complicates the claim:

• No apartment-specific violation or complaint history for Apt 4 at all in these datasets — nothing here corroborates conditions specific to Claire's unit; any condition-based claims will need to rely on her own documentation/photos/311 filings, not existing public records.
• HPD's own registration data doesn't include historical per-apartment rent-stabilization status (that requires a DHCR rent-history request for Apt 4 specifically — same limitation flagged in the precedent case).
• The landlord contact name given ("Joseph R. Owen") doesn't exactly match any name found in HPD/ACRIS records for this building (closest matches are "Joseph C. Owen Jr." and unrelated-officer-title "Joseph Owen" on sibling entities) — worth resolving before any demand letter or complaint names a specific individual as respondent.

Open follow-ups (not resolved by this pull):

1. NY Secretary of State entity search (apps.dos.ny.gov) for "251 Kane Street LLC" to get the registered agent/members list and pin down whether "Joseph R. Owen" is an officer.
2. A DHCR rent-history request (Form RA-90 / equivalent) specifically for Apt 4, 251 Kane St — the per-apartment registration history is the single most important document not available via NYC Open Data and would show legal regulated rent, vacancy history, and any deregulation filings.
3. taxbills.nyc / DOF historical tax-bill lookup — optional, only useful if a specific assessed-value or abatement-history question comes up later.