FirstService Residential

The largest managing agent in New York City — unlicensed in New York State

538 buildings. 5,870 Class C violations. No state license. No disciplinary body.

538 buildings managed

5,870 Class C violations
(immediately hazardous)

315 buildings with
Class C violations

10.9 violations
per building

PORTFOLIO GEOGRAPHY

538 buildings across all five boroughs.

FirstService Residential is the largest managing agent in New York City by building count. Their portfolio was identified through analysis of publicly available NYC housing registration records. The firm self-identifies in its registration filings, making portfolio mapping straightforward.

346 Manhattan

104 Brooklyn

68 Queens

19 Bronx

1 Staten Island

THE PATTERN

Habitability cliff.

FirstService's distinguishing pattern is what we call a habitability cliff: most of its 538 buildings look unremarkable, but a handful fall off a cliff into catastrophic numbers of Class C violations — conditions HPD classifies as immediately hazardous to life and health. One building alone carries 228.

The buildings with the worst conditions are the ones where day-to-day habitability has degraded. Heat failures, water infiltration, pest infestations, lead paint hazards, mold — these are the violations that make a building unsafe to live in, not unsafe to walk past. And the exposure is not only operational: across its 538 buildings FirstService has absorbed roughly $11.8M in DOB/ECB penalties of all types — the largest penalty total of any firm we've scored.

The top 25 FirstService buildings alone account for over 2,700 Class C violations. These are not paperwork failures. These are homes where residents are living with conditions the city classifies as immediately dangerous.

COMPARED

Bigger is not safer.

FirstService and AKAM are the two largest managing-agent portfolios in our catalog — 538 and 360 NYC buildings. If competence scaled with size, FirstService's buildings would be the best-run in the city. They are not: it carries the higher per-building violation rate and the larger penalty total of the two. Neither firm needs a license, an exam, or a regulator's sign-off.

FirstService (538 buildings)

5,870 Class C violations

10.9 Class C per building

$11.8M DOB/ECB penalties

The city's largest portfolio — and the higher per-building violation rate of the two.

AKAM (360 buildings)

3,192 Class C violations

8.9 Class C per building

$7.9M DOB/ECB penalties

Manhattan co-op specialist — roughly three-quarters of its buildings are in Manhattan.

THE 25 WORST FIRSTSERVICE BUILDINGS

Ranked by Class C violations.

Class C violations are HPD's highest severity — conditions that are immediately hazardous to life and health. These 25 buildings represent the worst-performing properties in FirstService's 538-building portfolio.

#	Address	Borough	Class C Violations
1	6801 Bay Parkway	Brooklyn	228
2	850 East 31 Street	Brooklyn	202
3	255 Eastern Parkway	Brooklyn	191
4	150-95 Village Road	Queens	158
5	304 10 Street	Brooklyn	152
6	344 West 72 Street	Manhattan	143
7	151 East Mosholu Parkway North	Bronx	138
8	1925 Quentin Road	Brooklyn	119
9	99-72 66 Road	Queens	119
10	2686 Morris Avenue	Bronx	114
11	201 Brighton 1 Road	Brooklyn	105
12	402 Bay Ridge Parkway	Brooklyn	98
13	298 10 Street	Brooklyn	98
14	150-10 71 Avenue	Queens	93
15	715 West 175 Street	Manhattan	89
16	215 West 116 Street	Manhattan	89
17	275 Park Avenue	Brooklyn	85
18	42-22 Ketcham Street	Queens	85
19	143-50 Hoover Avenue	Queens	78
20	1840 Grand Concourse	Bronx	77
21	209 Clinton Avenue	Brooklyn	71
22	2451 Webb Avenue	Bronx	70
23	2805 Heath Avenue	Bronx	68
24	310 Lenox Road	Brooklyn	67
25	790 Riverside Drive	Manhattan	66

Source: HPD Violations (NYC Open Data). Class C = immediately hazardous to life and health.

DATA SOURCE

Public records. 538 buildings.

The FirstService Residential portfolio was identified through analysis of publicly available NYC housing registration records. Every building on this page is verifiable through city data. The methodology is proprietary but the underlying data is not.

RIGHT OF REPLY

We believe in hearing both sides.

FirstService Residential has not yet been contacted for comment on this page. Per our Editorial Standards, we will request comment before publication and include any response verbatim, up to 500 words, alongside the relevant content.

538 buildings. 5,870 hazardous violations.
Zero regulatory consequences.

The largest managing agent in New York City operates without a state license, without a public complaint registry, and without a disciplinary body. Every data point on this page comes from free public records.

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