New York State’s landlord-tenant reforms, passed in 2019, were designed to protect renters from displacement. But according to Vincent Rondinelli, Principal Broker and President of Rondinelli Real Estate, the practical effect on small landlords in Buffalo has been a dramatic increase in financial risk. That shift is quietly reshaping who can afford to stay in the rental property business.
Before the reforms, evictions in Buffalo typically took about three months. Rondinelli says they now average around six months, with some cases stretching well past a year.
How Courts Count Rent Paid
The extended timeline is only part of the problem. The more damaging issue, in Rondinelli’s view, is how courts are interpreting what counts as rent paid. That interpretation can effectively erase a landlord’s legal claim against a non-paying tenant.
Rondinelli recently handled an eviction case involving a tenant of roughly six years who had stopped paying rent and had become unresponsive. When he submitted the tenant’s payment ledger to the court, the judge counted every credit card processing fee charged by his accounting software as rent paid by the tenant. Those fees went directly to the payment processor, not to Rondinelli. A balance Rondinelli calculated at roughly $5,000 to $6,000 was reduced to approximately $800 by the court.
At that level, the county would likely have stepped in to cover the remaining balance, effectively blocking the eviction from moving forward on non-payment grounds. Rondinelli’s attorney advised a notice-to-terminate approach, which required giving the tenant 90 days’ notice before any further legal action. The tenant left voluntarily within that window, but the outcome was not guaranteed.
“He could still be there. It could take another three to four months to get him out if he didn’t leave willingly. It would have been a year and two or three months that this guy didn’t pay, and he was legally allowed to stay in this property.”
Rising Risk for Small Landlords
These individual cases add up to a broader problem for landlords managing small portfolios. Rondinelli argues that longer eviction timelines, stricter procedural requirements, and court interpretations that reduce a tenant’s apparent debt have fundamentally changed the risk profile of owning rental property in New York since 2019.
Where a landlord once faced a worst-case exposure of three months of unpaid rent, Rondinelli now puts that window at six months to a year, with some cases stretching to 18 months or more.
“The risk in terms of getting rid of a bad tenant has gone up astronomically,” he says.
Operators with one to four units typically lack the cash reserves to absorb that kind of exposure while servicing debt, paying taxes, and maintaining the property. Larger, better-capitalized owners can weather those losses. Smaller ones often cannot. When they exit, the units they managed tend to sit vacant, be converted to other uses, or be absorbed by investors with deeper pockets and less concern for individual-unit performance. The slow-motion exit of smaller landlords from the Buffalo market is, in Rondinelli’s view, already underway.
Who Is Still Buying in Buffalo
The investor profile in Buffalo has shifted alongside the legal and cost environment. Rondinelli says the leveraged buyer has largely exited the market. Higher interest rates have cut into bottom-line profitability, making leverage a liability rather than a tool.
“The leverage buyers are gone. If you have $400,000 laying around, you can throw it into a four-unit in Buffalo and you’ll do good. But if you’re leveraging, you’re going to have a harder time.”
For cash buyers, Rondinelli sees opportunity at the lower end of the market, particularly in properties that need rehabilitation. For those seeking stabilized assets, he suggests focusing on more affluent neighborhoods where tenant quality and property conditions reduce operational risk.
Larger developers, however, are pulling back entirely. Many who had projects planned five years ago are now walking away. Construction and labor costs have climbed sharply since 2020, and without government assistance, large-scale development in Buffalo has become difficult to justify financially.
“Building one-off single-family housing in Western New York — you’re not going to make any money on it. If you’re going to build in Western New York, you have to make sure you have the scale to get the money back.”
A Problem Without a Clear Fix
Rondinelli does not offer a legislative solution, and he acknowledges that the 2019 reforms were not without purpose. During the COVID-19 period, the state’s emergency rental assistance programs kept delinquency rates manageable for many landlords, including Rondinelli’s own portfolio.
“In terms of delinquencies during COVID, at least in what I was dealing with in New York, there weren’t a lot of actual delinquencies, because the state did come in and pay the people’s rent,” he says.
The emergency-era protections have faded, but the structural changes to eviction law have not. One additional pressure point has emerged in 2026: a decline in Canadian activity in the Buffalo market. Rondinelli attributes this to tariffs and a broader reluctance among Canadians to engage with American markets, estimating a tourism decline of roughly 15 percent. The one countertrend is a small number of Canadian businesses establishing U.S. headquarters in Buffalo to avoid tariff exposure — a niche opportunity, but not enough to offset the broader pullback.
How Small Landlords Are Adapting
For small landlords still operating in Buffalo, the response to a more difficult legal and market environment has largely been operational. Tighter tenant screening, closer attention to lease structures, and earlier intervention when payment issues arise have become standard practice for operators trying to reduce exposure before a problem reaches the courts.
The shift in how landlords think about revenue reflects the same pressure. Property management — steady, fee-based, and less dependent on market conditions — has become a more reliable financial foundation than transaction-based income. Predictable recurring revenue carries more weight in an environment where a prolonged non-payment case can consume the better part of a year.
On the sales side, tight inventory and reduced transaction volume have made the market harder to navigate for smaller operators. The pace of activity that defined 2020 to 2022 has not returned, and new supply is unlikely to close that gap in the near term.
Whether small operators in Buffalo and across New York will find ways to sustain these adaptations, or whether the legal and cost environment will continue to thin their ranks, may depend on how courts interpret the 2019 reforms in the years ahead. For now, the gap between what the law intended and how it plays out in practice continues to widen.
About the Expert: Vincent Rondinelli is the Principal Broker and President of Rondinelli Real Estate, operating in the Buffalo, New York residential and investment property market.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
