More Parties Than a Single-Family File
A fire in a divided house displaces tenants, damages their belongings, interrupts rent and involves a building larger than a family home. Each of those is a separate strand and none of them waits for the others.
On the money side, the insurance settlement on a larger building is a larger trust with more potential beneficiaries once repair work begins, and section 70(2) makes it a separate trust for each improvement. The framework is on our page covering the trust and the records.
Do Tenants Have Claims on the Insurance Money?
Divided Houses Complicate the Repair
Where a building has been converted or subdivided over the years, restoring it may involve more than putting back what burned. Conversions carried out under earlier expectations are not necessarily what would be permitted now.
That is worth asking the city about before pricing a repair on the assumption that like replaces like, because the answer changes the scope, the cost and therefore the size of the settlement you should be pursuing.
Does That Affect the Insurance Claim?
We publish no permitted-use determinations, claim assessments or values for individual Nineteenth Ward properties. The city, your insurer and a New York lawyer answer those.
The Housing Repairs Well
Dimensional timber of this era chars on the surface rather than failing at connections, so members can frequently be assessed, cleaned back and retained with damaged sections replaced individually.
On large houses that is a substantial saving, and it is worth an engineer's opinion before a contractor prices a scope that assumes replacement.
Scale Cuts Both Ways
A big old house is expensive to repair and worth a good deal repaired. Which of those dominates depends on the specific street, and it varies more here than the neighbourhood name suggests.
Get the finished value from recent sales on your own street rather than from an impression of the area, because that number decides whether repairing or selling is the better answer.
Secure It Before the Freeze
Large roofs on damaged buildings admit a great deal of water, and freeze and thaw across a Rochester winter does to charred timber what the fire began. Securing is the cheapest work on the property.
The Nineteenth Ward in Context
Where restoration firms arrive fastest, see our page about the South Wedge and Highland. Where the arithmetic is tightest, see our page for the northeast and northwest.
The Sections Behind a Larger File
Section 70(2) of the Lien Law makes each improvement a separate trust with the owner as trustee, and section 70(5)(f) brings fire insurance proceeds within it. Article 3-A runs from section 70 to section 79-a.
Section 75 requires the records; section 75(4) makes their absence presumptive evidence; section 76 lets a beneficiary examine them after 30 days; section 79-a(1)(b) uses a 31 day limit.
Nineteenth Ward Questions
My Tenants Have Gone.
Their position and your trust obligations are separate strands. Keep them separate in your records and take advice on both.
Can I Put It Back as the Same Number of Units?
A question for the city rather than an assumption, and it affects the claim as well as the rebuild.
Will You Buy a Divided House Here?
Yes, tenanted or empty, and in any condition.