A website that aims to, “bring trust back to the Manhattan rental market,” by using government data to foster transparency on the part of landlords and reward those who adhere to best practices, has created a search engine that assigns a letter grade to every apartment in New York based on public records. Rentlogic.com, founded by former TED Fellow Yale Fox, uses an algorithm that incorporates both artificial intelligence and machine learning to assess and rank apartment buildings.
In Battery Park City, there are 16 buildings that are exclusively or primarily rentals. Almost all of them are assigned a grade of A. But among these, the standouts appear to be Liberty Green (300 North End Avenue), the Verdesian (211 North End Avenue), and the Solaire (20 River Terrace), all three of which have perfect records in three categories: no problems cited by the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), no violations cited by any other City agency, and no 311 complaints from the public.
At Battery Park City’s largest residential complex, Gateway Plaza, the record is mixed. Two of the development’s six buildings, 365 and 385 South End Avenue, earn an A rating. A third building, 345 South End Avenue, earns a B rating, apparently as a result 18 problems cited by HPD, and 22 violations issued by other agencies. Two more buildings, 355 and 395 South End Avenue, garner a grade of C, also as a result of recent problems and violations. Both of these buildings were earning A grades as recently as 2014, however. And one building within Gateway, 375 South End Avenue, was giving a failing grade by Rentlogic.com, stemming from 63 HPD problems and 38 violations from other agencies.
Within Battery Park City, the most serious black eye in terms of issues cited by HPD appears to be Tribeca Pointe (41 River Terrace), which racked up 416 such problems.
Elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, both towers in Tribeca’s Independence Plaza complex (310 Greenwich Street and 40 Harrison Street) earn an F rating. The former’s record includes 141 problems and 87 violations, while the latter tallies 283 problems and 113 violations.