NYC intercom and smart-access rules

Does your building have to have an intercom?

Two numbers and you have the answer. Nothing to fill in but the year and the units — no name, no email, no call.

Check your building

If the building was converted later, use the conversion year.

Every apartment in the building, not the floors.

Two numbers

Put in both numbers and you get the answer.

  • Units is every apartment in the building, not the floors.
  • For the year, the year it was built is fine. If it was converted later, use the conversion year, because that is the date § 50-a reads.

NY Multiple Dwelling Law § 50-a

Nothing here is sent anywhere. The answer is worked out in your browser from the year and the unit count.

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The three rules behind that answer.

All public, all citable, and all worth reading before you take a price from an installer.

Your building may be required to have a working intercom

NY Multiple Dwelling Law § 50-a

  • A Class A multiple dwelling with 8 or more units, built or converted after 1 January 1968, must have a two-way voice intercom at a self-locking main entrance.
  • Every unit has to be able to talk to the door and release it.
  • An older building has to put one in if a majority of tenants ask for it. The owner may recover that cost from tenants.
  • HPD inspects intercoms and writes violations when one does not work. A broken panel is not a maintenance item you can sit on.

What we do about it: We check the year, the unit count and the front door hardware during the survey, and the quote says which of those two cases your building is in.

Smart entry has its own law, and a key still has to work

Local Law 63 of 2021 (Tenant Data Privacy Act), NYC Admin. Code §§ 26-3001–26-3007

In force 29 July 2021. Tenants can sue over it from 1 January 2023.

  • A smart-access system needs express consent, in writing or in the app, from each tenant who uses it.
  • Collect only the data the door actually needs, and keep it only as long as it is needed.
  • A physical key has to stay available. A tenant cannot be made to use smart access to get into their own home.
  • Since 2023 a tenant can bring their own case over it, so this is not only an agency matter.

What we do about it: We set the system up so the lock still takes a key or a fob, and we hand over the consent wording and the data settings with the as-built drawing.

Who is allowed to pull the wire changed in December 2025

Local Law 128 of 2024, adding NYC Admin. Code § 28-105.4.7

In force 21 December 2025.

  • Wiring under 50 volts for signalling, communication, alarm or data does not need its own electrical permit.
  • That only holds when the work is done by a licensed master electrician, a special electrician, or a qualified person as the code defines one.
  • There is a hard exception. If the low-voltage wiring is connected to, part of, or inside a life safety system, a licensed master or special electrician has to do it.
  • So the question is never only what voltage the cable carries. It is what the cable is tied into.

What we do about it: Before we quote, we say which of those three categories the crew falls under for your job, and we flag anything that touches fire alarm so it goes to a licensed electrician instead of us.

This is a plain summary of public rules, not legal advice. Your building should confirm how each one applies with its own counsel.

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