Legal claims against New York City rental buildings nearly doubled between 2021 and 2023 before leveling off at that elevated rate. A new analysis of court filings matched to city housing data puts granular numbers behind a pattern that brokers placing multifamily liability coverage in New York have been pricing around for years.
The analysis was conducted by LegalClaimsAI and the NYU Furman Center and released by Milford Street Captive Insurance, which commissioned it. Milford Street sells captive insurance structures to landlords, so its interest in documenting the litigation problem is direct. The Furman Center is an independent academic research center at NYU, and its housing databases form the backbone of the building-level matching. Researchers analyzed 21,992 claims against 18,745 unique residential rental buildings across 916,207 units in NYC between 2021 and 2025.
Claims per 100,000 units grew 69.6 percent between 2021 and 2024, rising from 128.69 to a peak of 218.32 before easing to 200.3 in 2025. The Bronx recorded the highest per-unit rate of any borough, peaking at 253.42 claims per 100,000 units in 2024, compared with 151.7 per 100,000 in Brooklyn. Queens saw the fastest growth rate over the period, though its absolute volume remained lower.
The data also breaks down by building type. Government-subsidized and heavily rent-stabilized buildings consistently carried the highest claims rates per unit, outpacing market-rate and mixed-income buildings throughout the study period. Tort and negligence claims in government-subsidized housing grew 61.82 percent from 2022 to 2023 and a further 57.48 percent from 2023 to 2024.
The litigation environment the analysis documents is not new to carriers writing in New York. New York's Labor Law 240, known as the scaffold law, imposes absolute liability on property owners for gravity-related injuries regardless of fault. That standard has made New York one of the most difficult markets for general liability and umbrella placements nationally. Gallagher's 2024 mid-year real estate report found primary liability rate increases for multifamily portfolios running 10 to 20 percent, with umbrella rates up 10 to 15 percent, as carriers applied tighter terms and smaller line sizes.
What this analysis adds is specificity. It shows where the claims concentration is highest within NYC - the Bronx and affordable housing portfolios - and it documents a post-2021 surge that coincides with New York courts reopening after pandemic closures. Carriers writing these risks absorbed loss development from a compressed docket in 2020, then saw a sharp spike in filed claims as courts caught up. The Milford Street data confirms that spike was real and has not fully reversed.
The cost consequence is well-documented independent of the Milford Street report. The New York Housing Conference's March 2024 policy brief found insurance premiums for affordable housing operators rising an average of 26 percent annually, with the average per-unit cost doubling to $1,770 from $869 over four years. Separately, the New York Apartment Association's 2025 legislative testimony put total insurance costs for rent-stabilized buildings at $1,501 per unit in 2024, up 113 percent from $703 in 2020. In the Bronx and Northern Manhattan, the same geography the claims data flags, premiums rose 134 percent.
Those cost increases flow directly into rent calculations for stabilized units and into the viability of affordable housing developments. New York State passed legislation in 2024 banning discriminatory insurance practices against affordable housing providers. It addressed discriminatory intent. It did not address the underlying claims environment that makes underwriting those buildings expensive in the first place.
Brokers placing liability coverage for NYC multifamily landlords have been navigating this market for several years. The Milford Street data gives that experience a building-type-level shape, showing that the burden falls most heavily on the same portfolios where landlords have the least ability to recover rising costs through rent.
