Lucy Cohen Blatter

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Of the hundreds of apartment insurance claims Gotham Brokerage processes every year for NYC renters and co-op and condo owners, well over half are prompted by water damage—and not the Hurricane Sandy kind either. “Water damage from burst pipes, overflowing sinks, toilets, and heating and cooling units are far and away the most frequent claims,” says Gotham’s president Jeff Schneider. “The average claim size usually starts at a couple of thousand dollars up to the low five-figures, which is many, many times the annual cost of apartment insurance.”

While there are plenty of large rental buildings in this city where you'll probably never meet your landlord, there are still scads of small, no-frills ones owned by mom-and-pop landlords, many of whom reside in the very same building as their tenants. Small landlords are likely to be more choosy about whom they rent to--both because your rent represents a bigger share of their rent roll, and because you may be living under the same roof, able to get on your landlord’s nerves much quicker than you could a large landlord/management company. With that in mind, we asked several of members of Small Property Owners of New York, an organization of small landlords, to tell us what makes a promising applicant and a good tenant in their eyes. Here’s what they had to say.