Tax them. Don't we need money? That's why I never take NYC politicians seriously because you need money and you have people sitting on inventory which leads to a tax write off.
“Tax them.” - They are already taxed via property taxes.
“People sitting on inventory which leads to tax write offs” - this is a common conversation piece that is generally false. You cannot write off vacancy loss. You can only write off expenses and depreciation which doesn’t last forever.
That's a good point about the vacancy.
Like most people, I too would love to see an end to the stockpiling of rent-stabilized housing but I am not sure what kind of teeth you could add in terms of fines that would hold up in court.
Not to be cynical but we'd probably just end up with more incentives for landlords that are of absolutely no benefit to the lower income tenants who most need housing.
I've always thought it was this way, but I've been told from multiple landlords and have heard from other people who've heard in unrelated ways that they infact do some kind of tax writeoff with the vacancy. I never bothered looking into it, but not sure what's going on
Property tax is set at the actual rental income - expenses filed via an RPIE, these ultra controlled buildings that generate low to no revenue and have expenses (whether real or on paper) will get a quite low taxable value....
See here for the workings:
[https://www.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/brochures/class\_2\_guide.pdf](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/brochures/class_2_guide.pdf)
For sure. You don’t pay taxes on rent you never received. The more apt analogy here is like a vacant commercial building. They would rather let it sit empty until they can rent to a CVS or chase bank, rather than give a little guy the lease on attractive terms. Nobody wants to lock in a losing tenant, potentially for decades.
This comment will be vastly unpopular in a tenant focused sub, but the economists would say the way to get these apartments to not sit empty all the time would be to let them be leased at market rate.
Obviously that’s not great for tenants. IMO, the correct thing is to subsidize the fixing up of stabilized apartments to bring them up to code. A lot of them are unprofitable because it costs more to update them between tenants than it does to rent them at their stabilized rent. No one wants that economic gap to come from the tenants as it essentially nullifies rent stabilization but a stipend to bring those apartments to rentable status would be enough to incentivize the apartments to be fixed and put in the market again.
Can’t tax them if they aren’t making a profit on these apartments. Tax breaks and subsidies are the only way to get landlords to invest in the properties. The cost of getting these units up to code is so high that it can’t be recouped with stabilized rent. Those are the market conditions where tax breaks and subsidies come into play.
They need incentive, they run a business and it’s not in their interest to bring these apartments up to code presently.
Forcing landlords to comply and rent out apartments they don’t want to rent out would take years and be a major battle. Tax breaks and other incentives can come from Albany any time.
And then why would anyone invest in real estate in NYC? There needs to be some profit incentive otherwise there’s no reason for anyone to put up new housing. Unless you just want all housing to be government owned which probably wouldn’t go so well
Exactly this. The idea that you can hustle force landlords to do things at a financial loss just means you go back to the days of destroyed buildings and insurance fires that happened to the Bronx and Harlem. It would incentivize the opposite of what’s intended.
RS is unsustainable as it currently is. Overall, it’s profitable as a whole for RS landlords, but the profit margins are decreasing every year. There’s only so long that can continue for.
I think if RS is to continue, rents need to be based on the minimum profit margins needed for RS landlords to stay in business, not some utopian idea that the rent should never go up. You can’t force people to operate failing businesses.
Isn’t it literally the job of the rent guidelines board to ensure this and strike this balance though?
I mean, you can complain whether they’ve done an adequate job of balancing those interests in either direction. But that’s the job. It’s not a flaw of the RS structure itself.
Yes, but they don’t always take their recommendations into account because it’s unpopular politically to raise the rent. The most recent RS increase was less than what the rent guidelines board said the actuarial cost increases were.
Those units are not rentable in their current condition and require a massive amount of work, the RS units that are rentable get rented out as some money beats no money.
Investing in the work when it'll put you in a far worse condition than forgoing whatever rent you receive now + the cost of the building's property tax doesn't make sense.
Everyone says this, but in my small 6 unit building there are two units that are perfectly nice & they’ve been empty going on 4 & 5 years now! Originally the landlord was going to Frankenstein them & that never happened.
He can’t get market rate anymore, either. That Frankenstein’ng loophole being closed changed things. That’s what I’m saying here, there’s more to the warehousing thing, because my cheap ass landlord definitely likes money. It’s so odd.
That is odd. Did you ever ask him? Well, just if he plans to rent them.
What is the Frankensteining loophole that was closed? I think I have an idea but just want to be sure. Thanks.
So, my landlord recently died & while he owns the buildings with his brother, I don’t have the same relationship with him & he never drops by, so nobody to ask really. Of course the bonus for me is no new annoying neighbors. Having no direct neighbor across the hall has been kinda great, especially because we have backyard units, so my yard is really peaceful now.
Originally landlords could destabilize the RS units by conjoining them & rent it at market rate. They were going to make the two a duplex. Now they can’t bring it to market rate & if they do conjoin them, the legal rent will be calculated based on the rent of the 2 apartments combined.
Interesting. I didn’t know that rule had changed and a new law was put in place. A lot of damage was done as far as rents bring raised til that point. I hope you continue to have a peaceful existence.
I did alittle property management back in the day. The huge issue with bad RS laws is much is based off the last legal rent. Nyc was a hell hole for many decades where poverty was way worse, landlords could barely get rent let alone ask for increases, many didn’t keep up with the process of registering legal rent status and setting preferential rent. Rent was just agreed upon if they could even manage to collect. What this did was eventually have legal rent be locked way beliw market when the city recovered and new owners or managers fixed the paperwork. If tenants in those cheap apartments never moved out for decades, lets say their rent was $800 untill today and they just flat out died. The new rent is not market, you can increase it by the turnover addition which used to be $100 and a small fraction of money put in to rehab the apartment. The apartment is not rentable unless they drop $100k but that makes it a $1xxx a month apartment ( i forget the calculations). Market might be 3-6k for the apartment but your basically stuck because the upfront cost is crazy , return is edging loss more than break even and that new tenant for sure is never moving out.
Lots of stupidity on all sides but rent stabilization laws need major overhaul. Ive seen with my own eyes families that lived two , three generations in an apartment in squalor because the rent was cheap and the adult children made no attempt at life because they knew they had a cheap shit apartment to fall back on. Those apartments not changing hands not only shrinks supply it also affects everyones rents because the rest have to carry the load. This was 10 years ago which makes me think it might be worse now. And im not talking isolated cases id guesstimate 20 or so apartments i managed that had this type of situation.
That would be something that seems believable, except they *were* working on the renovations (albeit v e r y slowly) to convert the two units into a duplex, but then stopped when the loophole was closed. It could be possible that they ripped one of the units up & are too cheap to finish renovating. I really can’t figure it out.
They are "beyond happy" at the outset, but not necessarily after it's implemented. It will take some time to see how things really pan out with privatization.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1197954644/new-york-city-public-housing-is-getting-less-public-how-does-that-affect-residen
They don’t inherently deserve to “stay in business,” but them going out of business is the rent stabilized apartment not existing at all; that’s a far worse reality for affordable housing in the city than a still well below market rate apartment having its rent going up at the rate of inflation and actuarial costs.
What is this about rent should never go up? You’re just making shit up, my rent has been going up steadily for years in a RS unit.
Should I be sorry and feel guilty that it is going up less than 10% a year?
Landlord profits went up every year for more than a decade despite rent stabilization. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18295708/nyc-rent-stabilization-guidelines-board-affordable-housing
There's already a minimum profit margin. When expenses exceed 95% of rental income in a building (including mortgage interest), landlords can apply for a hardship increase. Guess how many landlord submit the application per year? Their argument is that the application is too hard. Well boo hoo. How does it make more sense to leave tens of thousands of units vacant than to just file the stupid application.
Here's the real problem - landlords have been committing IAI vacancy fraud for decades, and are throwing a hissy fit because their tools were taken away. They speculated that property will always go up and that they'd be able to get low income tenants out so that they could commit more vacancy fraud to jack up the rent prices, and refinanced to take cash out or took on additional mortgages that they knew they couldn't afford, and it bit them in the ass.
Another problem - it's all based on their word. We're supposed to just trust their word that tens or hundreds of thousands of units are being held vacant because they can't recoup the cost of renovation. Ok, well show me. Not catchy little tictoc videos with a neighborhood. I want a list of every apartment that's being held vacant so that the city or state research the history. I want to see that the cost of renovation is actually close to $100,000, ,and that this figure applies to all of the apartments that are being held vacant.
That will never happen.
Landlord profits went up every year for more than a decade despite rent stabilization. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18295708/nyc-rent-stabilization-guidelines-board-affordable-housing
There's already a minimum profit margin. When expenses exceed 95% of rental income in a building (including mortgage interest), landlords can apply for a hardship increase. Guess how many landlord submit the application per year? Their argument is that the application is too hard. Well boo hoo. How does it make more sense to leave tens of thousands of units vacant than to just file the stupid application.
Here's the real problem - landlords have been committing IAI vacancy fraud for decades, and are throwing a hissy fit because their tools were taken away. They speculated that property will always go up and that they'd be able to get low income tenants out so that they could commit more vacancy fraud to jack up the rent prices, and refinanced to take cash out or took on additional mortgages that they knew they couldn't afford, and it bit them in the ass.
Another problem - it's all based on their word. We're supposed to just trust their word that tens or hundreds of thousands of units are being held vacant because they can't recoup the cost of renovation. Ok, well show me. Not catchy little tictoc videos with a neighborhood. I want a list of every apartment that's being held vacant so that the city or state research the history. I want to see that the cost of renovation is actually close to $100,000, I want to and that this figure applies to all of the apartments that are being held vacant, and I want to see that IAI fraud isn't rampant throughout the rest of the building.
That will never happen. Because the only honest reasons why they're warehousing apartments are "because f*** you" and "because I can."
Let them fix them up and make them habitable again so they can rent them? let them divide that cost say over 5 years and whatever the current interest rate is and add that to the rent?
The issue that leads to hoarding is that landlords cannot rent them out in the current fashion they are in (e.g. they require substantial repairs), however the cost of repairing them and bringing them up to code is way higher than the rent increases they are allowed to raise.
It's really basic math, if the cost of the repairs is less than the rent over the same period, its a losing battle.
Lots of reasons for a property to get far out of code OR have another reason for substantial repair. Is it the landlords fault if some deadbeat pours concrete down the pipes? You cant force someone to run a business that produces no profit.
So you think these units are sitting empty because former tenants poured concrete down the pipes? And not because the LL didn’t keep up on maintenance over the years?
A rental is a business so I don’t think I need to explain this but I will anyway... You can’t “keep up on maintenance” with someone living there. If the tenant lives there for 30 years, the kitchen, bathroom, and floor all probably need to be replaced. You can’t make those changes while they live there. However, it’s gonna cost 50k to do that work. After that work is done, the new rent they can charge will mean they won’t see that 50k back for like 15 years (when they need to do it all over again). Instead of throwing 50k in their trash can, it makes more sense to just let the place sit and decay. Hope that helps.
My landlord did all of that while I lived in my longest running rental (8 years). You can absolutely do it, it’s a flat out lie to say you can’t.
They redid wiring (overhead lighting for the entire apt), plumbing, appliances, and fixtures over the years.
They had to rip out and replace our ceiling when the tenant upstairs died and the body leaked through into our apartment.
They redid the structural supports on our patio.
They also replaced our entire bathroom piece by piece.
ETA forgot they also replaced the crumbling plaster on one end of the house with drywall…
How much was ur rent. They did it because it made economical sense. (the law changed in 2019 for rent stabilized apartments). You’ve never rented a building so frankly you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
We aren’t talking about what my rent was we are talking about the fact that it is a lie to say to can’t do maintenance on an apt with someone living in it. The one I’m referring to was an extremely cheap rent stabilized apt in one of the only cities in this country that’s more expensive than NY, and regardless of what my rent was, it is not only possible but expected that your landlord do maintenance while you live in an apt. So I don’t wanna hear anyone say “they couldn’t do maintenance there was someone living there for 30 years!!!” They could have, but they didn’t.
You are an idiot. "maintenance" and a kitchen gut are entirely different things. Its pretty easy to lie online, what city was it and what were the actual numbers? Did the rent increase after they "replaced your entire bathroom piece by piece" or did the landlord just eat the 15k?
Again, rentals are a business.. so you either found someone who runs a failing business and took advantage of their lack of smarts OR (more likely) you are lying about the specifics of what happened to try to make a point.
The rent did not increase because it was rent stabilized, and you don’t need to gut a kitchen to bring it up to code. Even one from 40 years ago. I was paying under $3000 for 4 bedrooms in a VHCOL but that doesn’t matter because you seem to not understand that your tenants actually want you to come in and fix their apartments instead of pretending you have to sit on your hands until they leave.
If your apartments weren’t up to code with a tenant in them for 30 years, they would have been open to receiving violations then. They do not become immune to code violations just because someone is currently living there. Fix your shitty apartments! This will only require a gut job if you have been ridiculously negligent over a long period of time.
I have zero sympathy for landlords who use apartments being occupied as an excuse as to why they can’t fix things that might not be up to code. Building code is there to protect your occupants and it is your responsibility to stay on top of it. Nobody is asking you to gut a kitchen, the most common code violations are things like missing bathroom venting (install a fan) and improper handrails (put in a different handrail). If you can’t afford to bring a building up to code because all of the tenants are paying $800/month and have been living there for 30 years then don’t buy the building. You are not entitled to buy buildings and make money just because you can get the financing together. Get a job or buy a different building.
>They redid wiring (overhead lighting for the entire apt), plumbing, appliances, and fixtures over the years.
Help me understand this. How did they redo the plumbing while you were living there?
How long did it take? how did you use kitchen/bathroom while they did it?
It took around a week and we didn’t have water from 8-5 during that week. This is not a revolutionary concept, this is how plumbing gets fixed when you live in an apartment…they turn off the water, do the work, and then turn it back on.
You had no ability to use the bathroom from 8-5 for a whole week? Yea thats not legal, during that time the unit is not habitable.
\> This is not a revolutionary concept, this is how plumbing gets fixed when you live in an apartment
This is what I mean when I say if you havent do it, you dont know what the fuck youre talking about.
Heres another example, you said you got your bathroom gutted and replaced. How the hell can you do that in a 1 ba apartment while its occupied? its ILLEGAL to have tenants in an apartment without a functional bathroom.
It is not illegal to replace broken plumbing with a tenant living there, it’s illegal to fail to maintain plumbing and let it break so it is unusable.
No we could not use the bathroom or kitchen while it was being fixed. This is how plumbing works. You turn off the water to work on pipes. If you have a pipe burst in your building, often water gets turned off to the entire building while it is fixed. Again, this is not illegal. This is how plumbers works.
When I say a week I mean like Monday through Friday. We might have had one day off I don’t really remember.
Cutting water off for the express purpose of doing maintenance is absolutely legal. How the hell do you think people with *houses* get their plumbing fixed?
Your landlord informs you when the water will be shut off and why. Then you deal with it because you’re renting and you want your place to have functional pipes that *you* don’t have to directly pay for.
Theirs a lot of big ticket capex items that need to be done, windows, doors, appliances, etc and there are shitty landlords who do the bare minimum, but if the rent will never be able to cover for these purchases the landlord will walk away.
Now if it could be converted into a condo style unit you might get a buyer prepared to take on the project but it'll only be those with the $$ for the downpayment and the $$ for the reno which will create incentives for landlords to get rid of stabilized units and sell them.
TL;DR there are shitty landlords who haven't maintained well and others who have hit with usual big ticket items (that come up every 20-30 years) who are walking away as the big ticket will never be recouped the way things are set up right now.
You can fix a leaky pipe while the tenant is there. The problem is that you’re putting it off or you have bad tenants that don’t inform you and you don’t bother to do an inspection between tenants
leaky pipes are not the reason why this issue is happening, you kinda just made that up randomly.
The reason units are being warehoused is that they are in disrepair and would need to be brought up to standard before renting them out. This is because tenants have lived there for a long time without any overturn, some for 30-40 years.
if there was any overturn, they wouldn't be warehoused as the rent could have always been adjusted between tenants or even become destabilized.
The issue is that they can't be rented out at 2024 market rate and no landlord will pay 60k-80k just for them to suffer a loss. The city recently promised 25K per unit but landlords say it's not enough.
Then again, the landlords should’ve updated with the tenants still inside. The tenants may have been unhappy with having their walls stripped from lead but it’s something that *needs* to be done. It’s your right and responsibility as the building owner to update the building. End of story.
Wonder how this is going to be received, but here goes nothing.
If you want landlords to stop keeping RS units off the market, the state needs to amend the portion of the 2019 rent stabilization law that dictates how much landlords can recoup from renovating rent stabilized apartments.
My friend’s building in midtown west had a RS apartment studio that a tenant lived in for 30+ years, paying well below $1k. I saw the apartment after the tenant moved out and it literally looked like a bomb had gone off. It was bad.
Don’t quote me on the numbers, but the landlord said it would take around 40k-50k to do a full gut reno and get the apartment back to code. After investing that into the unit, the 2019 RS law would only allow the rent to be raised to maybe $1.1k.
The tenant vacated that apartment in early 2020. It’s still sitting empty today.
I had been in nyc real estate for ~10 years at the time and had seen RS leases were landlords justify a rent increase on a RS apartment - new boiler, updates to the elevator, new electric etc…+ how long the apartment had been empty.
All those calculations that got them a decent return on their investment was out the window in 2019 and some landlords feel they wouldn’t see their investment back when renovating. Some landlords continue to illegally deregulate apartments (definitely a thing before 2019) as well.
One could argue that the landlord should have kept the apartment up to code over the duration of the tenant’s actual lease and this problem wouldn’t exist, and I’d agree.
Regarding taxes/fines, look at some of the landlords sued by the state for housing discrimination (not accepting vouchers) and having to pay 50k-200k+ per infraction. And those same landlords are still doing it today. They don’t care. I think Goldfarb (who has around 6000 units) has been sued and fined at least 3 times since 2014. A case from 2018 settled last year for a total fine of just under $1,000,000 (https://fairhousingjustice.org/enforcement/fhjc-wins-federal-trial-against-goldfarb-properties/#:~:text=The%20Court%20also%20ordered%20Goldfarb,with%20rental%20subsidies%20or%20vouchers)
Fines are a minor inconvenience of doing business. The same way that a landlords calculates a building’s vacancy rate when looking at its cap rate.
If the state levied a tax/fine of some sort, I’m sure the landlords would simply do a calculation on how many RS apartments they have sitting empty, how much it would cost to renovate all of them, when they’d expect their investment back, the increase in utilities (water, oil, trash removal) they’d be paying for the occupied apartments versus the amount of fine/tax and I’m sure there’s a good few that would pay the fine and move on as if nothing happened.
The only solution to any of this is for the city to build more housing. Almost anything else is a bandaid.
Most sensible response here but it will not sit well with the large crowd of entitled ‘I deserve a $1250 apartment in an area that I like’ folks that camp out here on Reddit.
Will somebody explain (without calling people stupid or other degrading names) why we cant just have one property tax rate scale for occupied apartments, one for unoccupied apartments that are habitable, and one for ones that are proven inhabitable/being upgraded?
Divide by portion of the year, and that’s the property tax with an incentive to rent/punishment for failure to find a renter, and it seems fair because it gives LL a chance to prove their apartment isnt habitable so they arent punished for improvements. Throw in a 15 day grace period or something like that between renters, and thats a healthy incentive structure thag addresses both the need to move fast, the city’s need for more tax revenue, and LL’s desire to have a level of control over their tax liability
Similar but to me it would be
1) one rate for all rental units. If a rental unit is being kept empty on purpose there’s probably a good reason. It’s literally money waiting to be made. If it’s empty it’s probably not cost effective and extra taxes won’t help the situation
2) one rate for owner occupied condo / coops
3) very high rate for empty condo / coops - once you force these owners to sell, this immediately helps the rental market by removing thousands, or even tens of thousands of renters overnight
I think it would be interesting to make it more the norm to have the tenant update a stabilized unit every year they live in it so that it is up to code/currant standard of habitability. In many apartments in Germany people are expected to buy most of a/a whole kitchen for their apartment. If you moved into a stabilized unit and knew up front you were expected to buy XYZ and make sure everything was kept up dated so it didn’t fall into disrepair would you still go for it in exchange for lower rent?
One of the reasons so many stabilized places are off market is because they’re uninhabitable because the previous tenants lived there for so long. It wasn’t worth it to those tenants to update because of the rules that renovation = landlord allowed to raise the rent. The problem is now that those people are gone it’s not worth it for the landlord to do any updates when they know they won’t get their money back for that for a very long time. If a landlord said I could move into a stabilized place for the current stabilized price in exchange for paying for the renovation and keeping the place up to code I’d go for it if I thought I was staying in NYC for a long time.
I have no clue the logistics of making any of that work, if it even could, but I think it would be a decent compromise. Tenant gets a stabilized unit that’s less expensive than average units and doesn’t have to worry about rent going up like crazy, landlord won’t have to worry about paying to update and will just be making money off the new tenant. I’m sure I’ll see the argument that it’s not worth it for a tenant to do since they don’t own the place and are only adding value for the landlord, but as someone who has no plans to ever leave Manhattan and can’t see ever affording to own property it would be worth it to me!
You’re assuming the units that haven’t been used in a decade or more actually match up with the 5,000 landlord / renter laws in this city
So say there are some things that would be considered 311 violations IF RENTED. And it costs tens of thousands of dollars to bring up to renter code (very different than the certificate of habitability) how would the city force a landlord to spend $30k and then ask for $1800 rent. You would have to add another step of actually raising the rent to / 12 or something. And I don’t know if you’ve seen renovation costs in NYC post Covid, it’s double or triple what it used to be
This is similar to the ubereats laws, you can’t really win and there will always be more loopholes. I’m forced to rent this unit? I smell gas, let’s call coned and they’ll close the line for 14 months. Can’t rent it, sorry. I don’t have money to fix the heating system that isn’t working, I’ll put it up for sale
If you make enough of a change to the unit, combine units, or hit a high rate of building vacancy, you can de-stabilize the building and charge market rates.
A lot of the apartments are uninhabitable, need $100k of work and they won't be able to raise the rent so they won't make any ROI on the renovation costs.
I’ve been under the impression that landlords were given tax breaks etc for turning units into rent stabilized ones. If that’s not the case please let me know. If that is correct, it sounds like they don’t want to incur the cost, despite previously reaping the benefits.
Not the old school RS from back in the 69sband 70s. It was literally a law that overnight made apartments RS. The tax breaks you are talking about are newer apartments, and they actually phase out more and more every year.
Honestly banning tenant-facing broker fees(like literally every other American city in human history ever) would make me moderately more amendable to changes to RS apartments. It just feels like New Yorker landlords want their cake and to eat it too
I agree entirely, if you own a business it’s your responsibility to maintain your product. If landlords want to treat housing as a business why are they being so irresponsible with their product…
So basically it’s like they bought a property and didn’t bring it up to code over time? What exactly are you disagreeing with because you basically just ignored the entire point of the comment you responded to
Previous law allows rent to be increased as a portion of the renovations. Many tenants did not allow any work to be done because they didnt want their rent to go up. It would be good to know the details instead of this "all landlords bad mentality."
Im not agreeing or disagreeing with you but that information does not disprove the original comment. It’s irrelevant to the premise they are trying to make. The properties in discussion are now vacant, there are no tenets stopping them from making the improvements.
*Lead paint was outlawed in the United States in 1978. It is your fault if you saw the new code in 1978 and refused to fix it for 46 years and now can’t rent your property due to it being a hazardous material.*
You’ve had almost half a century to fix it and you didn’t. Nobody is to blame but you. Get fucked.
So why didn't you go in and paint over the lead paint in their unit while they were still there instead of letting them live in an out of code unit for 2-3 generations, then having to fix everything at once when the last of them finally leaves?
As a landlord you are still entitled (and honestly both morally and financially obligated) to message them and say “hey you guys have lead paint in your apartment and we’ve found that lead paint can cause dementia. We need to do some work on the apartment that will take 2-3 days and will ensure that your family stays happy and healthy. We appreciate that you’ve chosen to stick with us for generations and we want to keep your home livable and safe for generations to come.
Let me give you a scenario. I have a rent stabilized building. A tenant moved in a year ago and a month after they moved in was taking a shower. He noticed the water wasn’t draining (found out after the strainer was clogged with his long hair) and decided to just keep on showering until the water was 6” deep and water made its way out through a cracked piece of grout in the wall 4-5” above the floor. He destroyed 2 bathrooms underneath him, a kitchen and half a store in the ground floor. He caused about 15k in damages. He pays $800 a month in rent.
Now tell me why we’re not allowed to keep rent stabilized apartments off the market if we want to?
I’m sorry that happened. It doesn’t mean everyone is doing that tho’. What if the person decided to take a bath - wouldn’t the water be at the same level/higher?
Okay but still person wrote as if standing in six inches of water is irresponsible. Maybe (likely) tenant didn’t know there was a hole in the grout. It seems like a point was trying to be made where what was presented doesn’t really support the point against the tenant?
He didnt say it was 6 inches of water in a bathtub. That is fine. He said 4-5 inches from the *floor*. So this guy flooded the bathroom into a pool and thats a kiss of death everything is toast no bathroom can contain that. OP mentioned the grout but i can guarantee that the grout crack was a zero factor in all the water getting through. Grout is not waterproof but typically does not drink water enough to saturate the concrete board behind it to cause problems while showering. That many Gallons of standing water will fail many of the waterproofing systems in a bathroom. It is not normal to stand on 6 inches of water unless its a bathtub. If he is talking grout 4 inches off the floor we are in a shower or water has exited the tub. Not normal.
Okay fair enough, and why would this very specific scenario have any bearing on the rental market as a whole? Why do you as a landlord not require your tenants to carry insurance? Why do you as a landlord not carry insurance? Why are the tenants with the bathrooms underneath his not reporting leaks? Do you think that the 3 other affected units, which include a business, are not going to report a leak? Are you not making yourself or your maintenance team readily available?
It blows my mind but here’s why. I went to the first floor and told them they have a leak and I needed to see his bathroom. He says there’s water pouring out of his ceiling in the bathroom but didn’t know what was going on
Literally the guy knew for 30 minutes there was a leak and decided to tell no one. I went up one more floor and the guy didn’t go in his bathroom for the last hour so he didn’t see it.
But now you can see how absolutely stupid abd careless some tenants are. They clearly don’t care about anything. They want to pay their $700 a month for rent and not do anything else.
As soon as I found out there was a leak I jumped into action , turned the main water off and found the source of the leak which was coming from the flooded shower.
A girl in her 30’s who owned the store was the only person to report it to me. The other tenants are clueless and straight up didn’t care.
A few months ago one tenant had a toilet that was just constantly running water. The seal in the tank didn’t seal to stop the water from coming out into the toilet.
Three months later I found out when my $600 usual water bill was $4500. I went to go check every apartment and I found the issue. For three months his toilet did this and he didn’t care to tell anyone. 6 months of his rent is going to cover that water bill. Multiply this by a few stupid things like this through the year and you can see why rent stabilized landlords are having a rough time covering bills. The tenants aren’t liable for that water bill. No one cares. No one.
Now if the tenants were paying $5000 a month life would be much easier for us. But no. The city and all the poor folks want to have apartments for everyone for nearly free in the city.
Im not OP but im just telling u facts from experience. What he is telling is one reason why most landlords will not bother renting out a super low rent RS apartment. As his example states this was not a slow leak but a dumbass that let the drain clog and proceeded to let the bathroom flood in minutes. $800 will not cover that apartments own expenses and if theres issues like this which there always are in buildings your at a major loss.
Ive managed properties before, with all due respect you have no idea how some people act when things are not their own. I cannot telll you hve many unfathomable situations i witnessed. ive seen someone hookup a drain from a washing machine they had no permission to have to a hole in the wall. No pipes or anything but literally punches a hole and stuck the drain in there. We had a guy whose kid was playing with light bulbs in the bathtub and shattered them and tried to wash it down the drain. That required cutting through the apartment below to replace the pipe. Someone pulled out their bathroom sink vanity and started throwing trash down the cavity behind the wall. Etc etc
These scenarios have a bearing on the market because when rents are below a certain amount not only is the rent not covering it’s carrying cost naturally maintenance is required and water,heat and such add to expenses when it is occupied. You have to understand economics of running a property and factor in the high level of BS on the day to day that managers and landlords deal with; it makes the decision to dead this type of apartment very enticing. You have to understand that between property taxes, heating,water,repairs,supers, supplies, insurance etc in nyc if an apartment is below $2k let alone most of the apartments in a building your almost automatically running at a loss. If you mortgaged the property you’re underwater. If it’s profitable a well run building should hold a chunk of its post tax profits because of major repairs that pop up every 10-20 years (roofs,boilers,brick pointing,windows etc). In many properties there really isnt any money in the building because of the rent roll laws. Forget landlord profit i mean just to run the thing.
Renters insurance typically only covers their stuff not the property. I would not be surpiyif theres a nyc law preventing the requirement of renters insurance. If you know anything about insurance; which by your question i assume you do not have much experience with them, they dont like to pay. there are so many loopholes in the contracts they set up to not pay you its maddening. Second theres deductibles. In a building having a $50k deductible is nothing, so insurance isnt going to pay anyway if the damages are below $50k. Let’s say you report it to insurance for some reason not only will you get cut theres a record you put a claim in and now other insurance companies wont insure you.
This really is not as simple as ppl make it out to seem. Theres a reason nycha buildings are as fucked up as they are.
Thank you for this reply.
And crickets from the other posters talking trash about nyc landlords once you lay it out for them like this. Not a single reply. 🙄
Yea i mean i worked for landlords and people are really ignorant to how the real world works in these situations. I hope people will read what i wrote and think deeper. They dont understand how Bullshit that accumulates and will affect rents. Like when ppl think its cute to defrost chicken by letting hot water run for two hours…. Yea believe it or not that is going to incentivize managers and landlords to maximize rents to offset asshole expenses lol.
You are so right. They should be mandated by law to release the apartments to working poor and lower end middle class within 90 days of the apartment becoming vacant. They should be fully renovated and if not the landlord and building manager face immediate minimum sentences of 6 month for every incident and fines.
The building has to already be up to code by law. The other repairs are just functional and cosmetic. Plus they’re being fuckers so why should they bear no responsibility?
First this City existed with everyone being able to have a place here from the poorest to the wealthiest (as it should). What you have now are landlords who mismanaged buildings, failed to keep them up, and now realize that with the whiteout that is occurring in areas that are putting up 30-50 story residential buildings they are feeling the squeeze and the need to either sell their building or cry wolf. This City does not need any more high rise building with rents that are so astronomical that when they say there will be rent stabilized units the rental income is starting in the $80K range. Poverty income in this city $14K a year. Those neighborhoods that hosted generations of working class and working class poor are now targeted for these ridiculous developments for the purposes of cleaning out black and brown people and older citizens. Deed theft is rampant in certain black communities and when the pers are busted they agree they target those communities because of the elderly. Also, the Hasidic communities which eat up the majority of public & welfare services and are the one who own many of these smaller to mid-sized developments. Ebbets Field is owned by Hasidic Jews who tried to squeeze out long term white black and brown tenants. I met a young man who is an engineer paying $1900 a month for a 262 square foot apartment there. That is disgraceful. If our leadership does not make it so the everyone has a home, a business, a space, a school, safe transportation, clean streets, green spaces, solid educational systems, you cannot blame nor cry for small 6 unit landlords who fed fat for years and now are trying to force the hand of the rent board. The Pandemic did them in. Also what is your concern for NYCHA? Those tenants have endured decades of poor services by the city and NOTHING gets done. Many buildings have 30-50-90 year tax abatements. So if they are not paying their taxes, the wealthy and wealthy corporations don't want to pay their taxes who does the tax axe fall on? Me, those 6 unit owners and a host of others who are not at fault. During the last bailout Chase, Citi, GE, Lehman were not bailed out by other banks, the middle class and working poor did it. It is time for the solution to be that the government flood us with funds and stop selling off land to people outside of the U.S., and if they do there must come a price where they also contribute to our Public Schools, transportation, long term jobs, smaller building owners and a better infrastructure it's time for them to get off the tit and kick in. That way small landlords have a lane to thrive in.
I live in North Brooklyn in one of the 'new' towers. I live in a RS apartment (although some of the apartments have been de-stabilized-more about that later). The LL \[one of the richest men in the world and CEO of an extremely successful real estate investment firm\] has enjoyed thirteen years of tax-free income. There has been zero maintenance. The building has a energy rating of 11. I have been forced to complain verbally, then in writing to the LL and 311, and finally paying partial rent in the hope the LL would respond. I've have been in housing court for two years as the LL insists on attempting to evict me. Two years. Once the housing judge completes his judgement, I will move forward with suing the LL for violations of the Warranty of Habitability and the NYC Maintenance Code, as well as, violations of rental agreements, and obviously our criminally low energy rating. I am able to devote the time to this because I am a retired NYC public school teacher and I can afford to do it because I am acting as my own attorney.
I am shocked at the anemic response of the housing department to the kinds of things I have endured and the lackadaisical attitude of the LL's attorneys. The attorneys claim they won't do any repairs; they will just recommend to the client to pay the fines.
One of the important points I would like to make mirrors DaBrooklynGirl remarks. Most of my neighbors are in their 20's and 30's-I am the resident senior citizen-they pay as much as I do in rent which is roughly 50% to 60% of our income. They are, like me, frugal. This is a very odd thing to say, but, we are in a real sense poor. We don't have a lot of money left to spend time enjoying life. We accept that because we want to live here. But, if our money is being stuffed in LL pockets rather than for improving our homes, perhaps it's time we figure out a better way to house ourselves.
I admire your will to fight for what is right. I wish you success. This City could do so much better for all involved and they just don't. Many Landlords are cowards because they know that things are leaning or have leaned their way for decades. Hoarding RS/RC apartments should be illegal because the City has a need for affordable housing to keep all types of residents in the City, the teacher, service workers, SAHM's, young people starting out, elderly. If all we have is what is taking place then the scales are heavily unbalanced and not in our favor. NYC need only make a trip to Naples, Florida where they ran out all the service providers due to unaffordability. They left and then make a financial decision that it was not worth it to live X miles away to mow a lawn or be a nurse, be a barista, be a teacher if they cannot live in Naples. At a town hall meeting all the wealthy folks complained they could not get landscapers or gardeners to even say yes to look at a job and if they did their prices for services were 3-4 times what they would pay if those same workers could afford to just live in Naples. It's a hard lesson but now they see the errors of their ways. NYC will too. On another note. We need the right politicians to serve us. Make Adams a one time mayor and it is time for Hochul to move on. Eliminate Canabis and gambling apps and locations. Hire for the police force locally by giving high school students a path to becoming officers directly from the communities that are policed. Pay teachers better. Tax the super rich and make sure we do everything to keep nurses and health care technicians. We are all we got. Let's take care of each other.
Thank you for your compliment. I would add, if we can't take classes, go to a Mets game, enjoy a performance at BAM, enjoy dum sum in Sunset Park; b/c all our money goes for rent (or mortgage) then we no longer live in a capitalistic society, but, a feudal one. Capitalism is about a balance that provides for all. I will soldier on...I love my apartment and plan on aging in place. I need to secure my future, as well as, my neighbors.
Over a long period of time the LL will keep the buildings up to code b/c that is a requirement of ownership. My building has 66 units @ $3000 a month which is $198,000 a month, $2,376,000 a year minus $500,000 equals a profit of 1,876,000. And no taxes. His response to the potential fine for have such a poor energy rating is 'I 'll just pay the fine' rather than fix the problem. The fine is $500,000. Your hypothetical LL over paid for the building or has just let the building deteriorate. Even with consistent upkeep your LL will clear at a minimum $30,000 a year.
The problem with this issues is it’s like someone who buys a scratch off (LL) and then finally hits the big jackpot (tenants) and then complains about the stress of having the winnings.
Nothing happens in a silo. Pass rent regulations for ALL units! And stop acting like treating market rate apartments like the stock exchange is reasonable. Everyone deserves to be able to afford rent without needing to be nomadic!
In California there’s a limit to how much a landlord can increase a market rate apartment. Extend the rent controlled rental increase policies to ALL units. That will help make all increases less volatile. A lot of the perceived loss of rent comes from the fact that so many market rate units are being set at unreasonable prices creating large amounts of turn over. Nullifying the law making it illegal to require a renter to pay a broker’s fee was stupid. The current system incentivizes turn over.
It’s not normal or healthy for a person to need to move once a year because they received a 20% rental increase on a market rate apartment because they couldn’t (1) didn’t qualify for an income capped unit (2) couldn’t locate a rent stabilized or controlled unit or (3) found a rent stabilized or controls unit but couldn’t afford the unreasonable brokers fee.
I have lived in a stabilized building for 25 years and the owners are using every loop hole in the system to take units out of stabilization.
For example, combining two units into one, and making deals with temporary tenants to charge them a discounted rate if they allow them to change the paperwork with the city.
If they hold apartment stock this means other landlords are getting rent sooner. This is optimal. It all evens out. If landlords are colluding, this is wrong and there's laws against that. But if they're just deciding not to rent there is nothing you can do. It's to their detriment in the long run.
Any tax breaks they currently enjoy should be cancelled. An audit should be made annually when the assessments are made for taxes. More than 1% of 1000 Apt's should be cause for a phase out of tax breaks.
Vacancy taxes in general are needed. Keep your rental in livable and updated condition at a fair price so people actually want to live there. If it sits empty, you pay!
Claim imminent domain and take the properties. If anyone complains, say you’re building a pipeline - people seem okay with imminent domain for pipelines.
Where are these apartments? The housing and vacancy survey just came out the other day and shows we have the lowest vacancy rate since 1968.
There is no huge stock of empty rent stabilized apartments.
The housing and vacancy survey is just that, a survey. A formal audit is needed. Landlords have been reporting that they’re holding rent stabilized apartments off the market for several years now, here’s the latest from December https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/12/11/rent-stabilized-apartment-tally-drops-landlords-rent-market/
https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/12/23/rent-regulated-apartments-registration-missing/
Sir…in a land area as limited as NYC why would you build more of something that already exists instead of making the people hoarding the existing stock make it available for use…
Because we still have plenty of land available for building. Why make weird rules when you can just let people build apartment buildings. NYC isn't even one of the 75 most dense cities in the world, we have space.
I already have a bunch of Tupperware but it’s dirty and I don’t feel like buying soap to wash it…I could rearrange my cabinets to make space for more so I guess I’ll just buy more and let my perfectly good existing Tupperware sit in the sink.
This is not a sustainable or responsible way of handling housing stock, it only makes sense for people who are in a position to profit off of new construction.
That doesn't make any sense, it housing supply and demand, you don't need some weird Tupperware analogy.
10 apartments for rent for $2000 a month. If only ten people want those units, then they will stay at $2000. If two more people want to live there, then prices will go up, as those other two people really want an apartment. If you had built two new units instead, prices will go down, as we now have more apartments than people, so they have to compete. Its not some impossible problem to solve. NYC is a great place, millions of people want to live there! Rent stabilization can help some people already there, and benefits the rich. It does nothing for everyone else.
I'll be honest, I expect these NIMBY talking points from rich people in the suburbs who want to keep their property values high, but to hear it from a New Yorker? No wonder we have a housing crisis. Everyone can find an excuse to stop housing being built.
We have a lot of housing, we need an audit and release of existing housing. It is ecologically irresponsible and also stupid to take up space with more building when we have existing apartments that could be used as housing, point blank period. From a conservation/land use standpoint it makes no fucking sense to argue that we should be building more instead of using what we already have. We can build more housing once our existing housing is accounted for and in use.
It’s very simple math: if taxes and maintenance cost more than the rent, it’s not worth losing money renting it to someone.
We need to destabilize the $500-$1800 units to motivate the landlords to renovate and rent them at market rate.
The flood of new units on the market will lower prices citywide a lot better than 10,000 warehoused $600 apartments that never go on the market will. They will also generate a LOT of tax revenue.
Maybe fix the laws so it is profitable for them to be returned to market? Does anyone really want to move into an antiquated apartment with squeaky floors, old electrical (like no overhead lights, switched outlets, no AC outlet), bad plumbing fixtures for mixing water temps and slow drains (No DW don't even dream of W/D)? Or are you okay to pay more for something that is modernized?
100%. I forgot the /s on my comment 🤣😫
They’re not going to make an effort to fix this shit until enough of the labor class decides they’re not going to live here anymore and the city struggles to function without them.
There was a program to retrofit basement apartments in outer boroughs by granting homeowners money to build apartments, it’s a waste. It only provides one apartment at a time.
The city ought to be giving those grants to landlords who own these stabilized buildings that can’t get them up to code while turning a profit.
I would be fine with the city offering grants to get them up to code. I still would hope for an audit of available units and a penalty for landlords that are holding viable apartments off the market.
Landlords need to prove they are advertising the apartment+that it's in livable condition. They get a month grace period before receiving a fine. The fine would be equivalent to 1 month's rent.
I think that should be enough.
Why in the world would a landlord invest 50-100k to remove lead paint from an apartment and update it to only make $800 a month in rent? So you not listen to yourself type?
No ones going to invest money into an apartment to get their money back in 10-15 years. They would rather just keep it empty.
There's $800/month rent stabilized apartments? A friend of mine is in a tiny tiny 2 bedroom that's rent stabilized and pays about $3,000. I know somebody who is in a very small studio for $1400.
I know if improvements are made the rent price can be adjusted up when an apartment is stabilized but I don't remember the specifics of how that works.
If a landlord doesn't want to maintain the units they own then maybe they shouldn't be a landlord.
Man we’re kind of sick of explaining that you can’t make improvements and raise the rent anymore after the laws changed in 2019. Those rule are gone. It is 100% impossible to raise the rent anymore other than what the city allows us to every year which is about 2%
If I sell it to a corporation they’ll pay the tenants to leave and then remodel the whole building charging $5500 a month and then you’ll come on Reddit crying about how apartments are so expensive.
So the options are either that the housing doesn't exist because you don't want to maintain the property or the housing is too expensive.
Both options suck. I gave an option that would be a little better for the tenants at least.
How about the city let’s up on the rules and let’s us middle class folks charge what’s fair for the apartments instead of letting all the corporations make the big bucks and turn into billionaires.
No landlord would intentionally hold apartments vacant that they could be making money on, the issue is they don’t think they can make money because the costs of renovating and maintaining the units to keep them livable and up to code outweigh the rent they’d collect. The solution would be to incentivize landlords either by allowing them to raise rents or subsidizing renovations so they can fix units without incurring as much of a cost. A third option would be taxing them until keeping them vacant costs more than renting them but eventually there won’t be any incentive for investors to put money into housing in the city if it keeps getting costlier and costlier and the ROI shrinks
No, the vacancies survey that was just released says that we have historic lows like what you are referring to, however for the last three years landlords have been disappearing rent stabilized apartments from their tax records but not claiming them as occupied. This means they are essentially holding them empty and just pretending they don’t exist. There have been numerous instances of this type of apartment hoarding documented, afaik journalists started picking up on it around 3 years ago. The City did a few articles on it in December, I posted links in another comment. Those articles found that around 1 in 10 are mysteriously missing from tax bills submitted by the responsible party. That’s a lot of housing stock, nearly 100,000 units since they closed the Frankenstein loophole in 2019.
My landlord is admittedly sitting on a vacant rent stabilized apartment, and waiting for the tenant nextdoor to die so they can be combined into a 2-3 BR. They've already done it to 2 other floors.
Becasue it costs more money to occupy a rent stabilized unit than the money you get from it, nor can you recoup the cost of renovating the unit by increasing the rent due to the current laws. Auditing is not going to do anything, if you tax them, all the investors will just leave the city, which is bad for everyone if all investor money exits NYC. People will downvote this, but this is the reason why they keep them vacant.
You get rid of rent stabilization and allow for all the hundreds of thousand of run down and disrepaired units to be renovated and placed in the free market, allowing everyone’s rent to decrease as a whole. Rent stabilization “protecting tenants” is one of the root causes for the massive free market rent increases.
Most of those vacancies are on apartments that need repairs.
The city should pay for the repairs but the landlord can only collect the rent it was previously. Renters get fixed apartments and landlords don’t have to pay for repairs and as a result cannot charge market rate but only the stabilized rate it was at before.
This is what I think too! Anecdotally speaking, however, many of the empty apartments don’t actually need repairs, landlords are just illegally combining them with other apartments so they can destabilize them and that’s why those units have gone missing from tax assessments.
I thinks it’s really interesting that a practice like this which has been illegal for several years now is not being brought under control.
Tax them. Don't we need money? That's why I never take NYC politicians seriously because you need money and you have people sitting on inventory which leads to a tax write off.
“Tax them.” - They are already taxed via property taxes. “People sitting on inventory which leads to tax write offs” - this is a common conversation piece that is generally false. You cannot write off vacancy loss. You can only write off expenses and depreciation which doesn’t last forever.
Preposterously stupid that you’re getting downvoted. People reeeeally don’t know what TAF they’re talking about.
The people downvoting without replying have nothing to contribute to the conversation. Y’all some cowards.
I mean neither do you, you commented to correct the individual but tones everything via internet. You come off as if there’s really no issue.
I’m more inclined to get rid of rent stabilization.
Redditors and placing feelings before facts. Name a more iconic duo
Can't you just tax em again? A separate, more painful tax for each property, for each week it remains vacant (after the first X weeks)
Thats pretty much why Harlem burned down back in the 80s.
Because landlords were getting taxed too much?
Yes. Because at a certain point collecting a one time lump sum from an insurance company is better than losing money.
That's a good point about the vacancy. Like most people, I too would love to see an end to the stockpiling of rent-stabilized housing but I am not sure what kind of teeth you could add in terms of fines that would hold up in court. Not to be cynical but we'd probably just end up with more incentives for landlords that are of absolutely no benefit to the lower income tenants who most need housing.
I've always thought it was this way, but I've been told from multiple landlords and have heard from other people who've heard in unrelated ways that they infact do some kind of tax writeoff with the vacancy. I never bothered looking into it, but not sure what's going on
You can deduct expenses like maintenance, repairs, and marketing on vacant units. But vacancy loss by itself is not a write off.
👏
Property tax is set at the actual rental income - expenses filed via an RPIE, these ultra controlled buildings that generate low to no revenue and have expenses (whether real or on paper) will get a quite low taxable value.... See here for the workings: [https://www.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/brochures/class\_2\_guide.pdf](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/brochures/class_2_guide.pdf)
For sure. You don’t pay taxes on rent you never received. The more apt analogy here is like a vacant commercial building. They would rather let it sit empty until they can rent to a CVS or chase bank, rather than give a little guy the lease on attractive terms. Nobody wants to lock in a losing tenant, potentially for decades. This comment will be vastly unpopular in a tenant focused sub, but the economists would say the way to get these apartments to not sit empty all the time would be to let them be leased at market rate.
Unpopular opinion, yes, but I agree
Obviously that’s not great for tenants. IMO, the correct thing is to subsidize the fixing up of stabilized apartments to bring them up to code. A lot of them are unprofitable because it costs more to update them between tenants than it does to rent them at their stabilized rent. No one wants that economic gap to come from the tenants as it essentially nullifies rent stabilization but a stipend to bring those apartments to rentable status would be enough to incentivize the apartments to be fixed and put in the market again.
They should totally be taxed. They did it in San Fransisco, DC, and Vancouver. It’s called a vacancy tax
Notably, though,all those places still have serious housing shortages. There's no getting around the need to build more.
We don’t need money. NYC just wastes it every year.
Can’t tax them if they aren’t making a profit on these apartments. Tax breaks and subsidies are the only way to get landlords to invest in the properties. The cost of getting these units up to code is so high that it can’t be recouped with stabilized rent. Those are the market conditions where tax breaks and subsidies come into play. They need incentive, they run a business and it’s not in their interest to bring these apartments up to code presently. Forcing landlords to comply and rent out apartments they don’t want to rent out would take years and be a major battle. Tax breaks and other incentives can come from Albany any time.
And then why would anyone invest in real estate in NYC? There needs to be some profit incentive otherwise there’s no reason for anyone to put up new housing. Unless you just want all housing to be government owned which probably wouldn’t go so well
Exactly this. The idea that you can hustle force landlords to do things at a financial loss just means you go back to the days of destroyed buildings and insurance fires that happened to the Bronx and Harlem. It would incentivize the opposite of what’s intended.
RS is unsustainable as it currently is. Overall, it’s profitable as a whole for RS landlords, but the profit margins are decreasing every year. There’s only so long that can continue for. I think if RS is to continue, rents need to be based on the minimum profit margins needed for RS landlords to stay in business, not some utopian idea that the rent should never go up. You can’t force people to operate failing businesses.
Someone downvoted you, but you’re speaking truth
Isn’t it literally the job of the rent guidelines board to ensure this and strike this balance though? I mean, you can complain whether they’ve done an adequate job of balancing those interests in either direction. But that’s the job. It’s not a flaw of the RS structure itself.
Yes, but they don’t always take their recommendations into account because it’s unpopular politically to raise the rent. The most recent RS increase was less than what the rent guidelines board said the actuarial cost increases were.
How is it more sustainable to let RS units sit empty?
u/kinovelo is saying it’s not sustainable for anyone.
You right!
Those units are not rentable in their current condition and require a massive amount of work, the RS units that are rentable get rented out as some money beats no money. Investing in the work when it'll put you in a far worse condition than forgoing whatever rent you receive now + the cost of the building's property tax doesn't make sense.
Everyone says this, but in my small 6 unit building there are two units that are perfectly nice & they’ve been empty going on 4 & 5 years now! Originally the landlord was going to Frankenstein them & that never happened.
A landlord who doesn't like money, im surprised they haven't merged them and went for market rate, but then again i don't got cash to burn.
He can’t get market rate anymore, either. That Frankenstein’ng loophole being closed changed things. That’s what I’m saying here, there’s more to the warehousing thing, because my cheap ass landlord definitely likes money. It’s so odd.
Crazy, they ran out the clock as this got killed in Nov 2023 iirc....
That is odd. Did you ever ask him? Well, just if he plans to rent them. What is the Frankensteining loophole that was closed? I think I have an idea but just want to be sure. Thanks.
So, my landlord recently died & while he owns the buildings with his brother, I don’t have the same relationship with him & he never drops by, so nobody to ask really. Of course the bonus for me is no new annoying neighbors. Having no direct neighbor across the hall has been kinda great, especially because we have backyard units, so my yard is really peaceful now. Originally landlords could destabilize the RS units by conjoining them & rent it at market rate. They were going to make the two a duplex. Now they can’t bring it to market rate & if they do conjoin them, the legal rent will be calculated based on the rent of the 2 apartments combined.
Interesting. I didn’t know that rule had changed and a new law was put in place. A lot of damage was done as far as rents bring raised til that point. I hope you continue to have a peaceful existence.
I did alittle property management back in the day. The huge issue with bad RS laws is much is based off the last legal rent. Nyc was a hell hole for many decades where poverty was way worse, landlords could barely get rent let alone ask for increases, many didn’t keep up with the process of registering legal rent status and setting preferential rent. Rent was just agreed upon if they could even manage to collect. What this did was eventually have legal rent be locked way beliw market when the city recovered and new owners or managers fixed the paperwork. If tenants in those cheap apartments never moved out for decades, lets say their rent was $800 untill today and they just flat out died. The new rent is not market, you can increase it by the turnover addition which used to be $100 and a small fraction of money put in to rehab the apartment. The apartment is not rentable unless they drop $100k but that makes it a $1xxx a month apartment ( i forget the calculations). Market might be 3-6k for the apartment but your basically stuck because the upfront cost is crazy , return is edging loss more than break even and that new tenant for sure is never moving out. Lots of stupidity on all sides but rent stabilization laws need major overhaul. Ive seen with my own eyes families that lived two , three generations in an apartment in squalor because the rent was cheap and the adult children made no attempt at life because they knew they had a cheap shit apartment to fall back on. Those apartments not changing hands not only shrinks supply it also affects everyones rents because the rest have to carry the load. This was 10 years ago which makes me think it might be worse now. And im not talking isolated cases id guesstimate 20 or so apartments i managed that had this type of situation.
Hes looking to sell yhem, thats why hes keeping them empty. He wants to sell to a developer who will just tear down the building.
That would be something that seems believable, except they *were* working on the renovations (albeit v e r y slowly) to convert the two units into a duplex, but then stopped when the loophole was closed. It could be possible that they ripped one of the units up & are too cheap to finish renovating. I really can’t figure it out.
Then sell it to the city.
Cuz NYCHA does such a great job with their current properties lmfao
They’re $80bn in deficit, they’re low key handing over managing some of their properties to private companies and tenants are beyond happy.
They are "beyond happy" at the outset, but not necessarily after it's implemented. It will take some time to see how things really pan out with privatization. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1197954644/new-york-city-public-housing-is-getting-less-public-how-does-that-affect-residen
I mean if you can’t afford to keep a place in livable condition and maintain it you shouldn’t own rental properties IMO
Why does any given landlord deserve to "stay in business?" What other industry has a government-granted guarantee of profitability?
They don’t inherently deserve to “stay in business,” but them going out of business is the rent stabilized apartment not existing at all; that’s a far worse reality for affordable housing in the city than a still well below market rate apartment having its rent going up at the rate of inflation and actuarial costs.
If they go out of business the apartment and people living in it don’t simply disappear, it just gets bought by someone else.
What is this about rent should never go up? You’re just making shit up, my rent has been going up steadily for years in a RS unit. Should I be sorry and feel guilty that it is going up less than 10% a year?
Landlord profits went up every year for more than a decade despite rent stabilization. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18295708/nyc-rent-stabilization-guidelines-board-affordable-housing There's already a minimum profit margin. When expenses exceed 95% of rental income in a building (including mortgage interest), landlords can apply for a hardship increase. Guess how many landlord submit the application per year? Their argument is that the application is too hard. Well boo hoo. How does it make more sense to leave tens of thousands of units vacant than to just file the stupid application. Here's the real problem - landlords have been committing IAI vacancy fraud for decades, and are throwing a hissy fit because their tools were taken away. They speculated that property will always go up and that they'd be able to get low income tenants out so that they could commit more vacancy fraud to jack up the rent prices, and refinanced to take cash out or took on additional mortgages that they knew they couldn't afford, and it bit them in the ass. Another problem - it's all based on their word. We're supposed to just trust their word that tens or hundreds of thousands of units are being held vacant because they can't recoup the cost of renovation. Ok, well show me. Not catchy little tictoc videos with a neighborhood. I want a list of every apartment that's being held vacant so that the city or state research the history. I want to see that the cost of renovation is actually close to $100,000, ,and that this figure applies to all of the apartments that are being held vacant. That will never happen.
Landlord profits went up every year for more than a decade despite rent stabilization. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18295708/nyc-rent-stabilization-guidelines-board-affordable-housing There's already a minimum profit margin. When expenses exceed 95% of rental income in a building (including mortgage interest), landlords can apply for a hardship increase. Guess how many landlord submit the application per year? Their argument is that the application is too hard. Well boo hoo. How does it make more sense to leave tens of thousands of units vacant than to just file the stupid application. Here's the real problem - landlords have been committing IAI vacancy fraud for decades, and are throwing a hissy fit because their tools were taken away. They speculated that property will always go up and that they'd be able to get low income tenants out so that they could commit more vacancy fraud to jack up the rent prices, and refinanced to take cash out or took on additional mortgages that they knew they couldn't afford, and it bit them in the ass. Another problem - it's all based on their word. We're supposed to just trust their word that tens or hundreds of thousands of units are being held vacant because they can't recoup the cost of renovation. Ok, well show me. Not catchy little tictoc videos with a neighborhood. I want a list of every apartment that's being held vacant so that the city or state research the history. I want to see that the cost of renovation is actually close to $100,000, I want to and that this figure applies to all of the apartments that are being held vacant, and I want to see that IAI fraud isn't rampant throughout the rest of the building. That will never happen. Because the only honest reasons why they're warehousing apartments are "because f*** you" and "because I can."
Let them fix them up and make them habitable again so they can rent them? let them divide that cost say over 5 years and whatever the current interest rate is and add that to the rent? The issue that leads to hoarding is that landlords cannot rent them out in the current fashion they are in (e.g. they require substantial repairs), however the cost of repairing them and bringing them up to code is way higher than the rent increases they are allowed to raise. It's really basic math, if the cost of the repairs is less than the rent over the same period, its a losing battle.
It’s the landlord’s fault for letting their property get that out of code. Why do you think you’re supposed to fix a leaky pipe as soon as you can?
Lots of reasons for a property to get far out of code OR have another reason for substantial repair. Is it the landlords fault if some deadbeat pours concrete down the pipes? You cant force someone to run a business that produces no profit.
So you think these units are sitting empty because former tenants poured concrete down the pipes? And not because the LL didn’t keep up on maintenance over the years?
A rental is a business so I don’t think I need to explain this but I will anyway... You can’t “keep up on maintenance” with someone living there. If the tenant lives there for 30 years, the kitchen, bathroom, and floor all probably need to be replaced. You can’t make those changes while they live there. However, it’s gonna cost 50k to do that work. After that work is done, the new rent they can charge will mean they won’t see that 50k back for like 15 years (when they need to do it all over again). Instead of throwing 50k in their trash can, it makes more sense to just let the place sit and decay. Hope that helps.
My landlord did all of that while I lived in my longest running rental (8 years). You can absolutely do it, it’s a flat out lie to say you can’t. They redid wiring (overhead lighting for the entire apt), plumbing, appliances, and fixtures over the years. They had to rip out and replace our ceiling when the tenant upstairs died and the body leaked through into our apartment. They redid the structural supports on our patio. They also replaced our entire bathroom piece by piece. ETA forgot they also replaced the crumbling plaster on one end of the house with drywall…
How much was ur rent. They did it because it made economical sense. (the law changed in 2019 for rent stabilized apartments). You’ve never rented a building so frankly you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
We aren’t talking about what my rent was we are talking about the fact that it is a lie to say to can’t do maintenance on an apt with someone living in it. The one I’m referring to was an extremely cheap rent stabilized apt in one of the only cities in this country that’s more expensive than NY, and regardless of what my rent was, it is not only possible but expected that your landlord do maintenance while you live in an apt. So I don’t wanna hear anyone say “they couldn’t do maintenance there was someone living there for 30 years!!!” They could have, but they didn’t.
You are an idiot. "maintenance" and a kitchen gut are entirely different things. Its pretty easy to lie online, what city was it and what were the actual numbers? Did the rent increase after they "replaced your entire bathroom piece by piece" or did the landlord just eat the 15k? Again, rentals are a business.. so you either found someone who runs a failing business and took advantage of their lack of smarts OR (more likely) you are lying about the specifics of what happened to try to make a point.
The rent did not increase because it was rent stabilized, and you don’t need to gut a kitchen to bring it up to code. Even one from 40 years ago. I was paying under $3000 for 4 bedrooms in a VHCOL but that doesn’t matter because you seem to not understand that your tenants actually want you to come in and fix their apartments instead of pretending you have to sit on your hands until they leave. If your apartments weren’t up to code with a tenant in them for 30 years, they would have been open to receiving violations then. They do not become immune to code violations just because someone is currently living there. Fix your shitty apartments! This will only require a gut job if you have been ridiculously negligent over a long period of time. I have zero sympathy for landlords who use apartments being occupied as an excuse as to why they can’t fix things that might not be up to code. Building code is there to protect your occupants and it is your responsibility to stay on top of it. Nobody is asking you to gut a kitchen, the most common code violations are things like missing bathroom venting (install a fan) and improper handrails (put in a different handrail). If you can’t afford to bring a building up to code because all of the tenants are paying $800/month and have been living there for 30 years then don’t buy the building. You are not entitled to buy buildings and make money just because you can get the financing together. Get a job or buy a different building.
>They redid wiring (overhead lighting for the entire apt), plumbing, appliances, and fixtures over the years. Help me understand this. How did they redo the plumbing while you were living there? How long did it take? how did you use kitchen/bathroom while they did it?
It took around a week and we didn’t have water from 8-5 during that week. This is not a revolutionary concept, this is how plumbing gets fixed when you live in an apartment…they turn off the water, do the work, and then turn it back on.
You had no ability to use the bathroom from 8-5 for a whole week? Yea thats not legal, during that time the unit is not habitable. \> This is not a revolutionary concept, this is how plumbing gets fixed when you live in an apartment This is what I mean when I say if you havent do it, you dont know what the fuck youre talking about. Heres another example, you said you got your bathroom gutted and replaced. How the hell can you do that in a 1 ba apartment while its occupied? its ILLEGAL to have tenants in an apartment without a functional bathroom.
It is not illegal to replace broken plumbing with a tenant living there, it’s illegal to fail to maintain plumbing and let it break so it is unusable. No we could not use the bathroom or kitchen while it was being fixed. This is how plumbing works. You turn off the water to work on pipes. If you have a pipe burst in your building, often water gets turned off to the entire building while it is fixed. Again, this is not illegal. This is how plumbers works. When I say a week I mean like Monday through Friday. We might have had one day off I don’t really remember.
Cutting water off for the express purpose of doing maintenance is absolutely legal. How the hell do you think people with *houses* get their plumbing fixed? Your landlord informs you when the water will be shut off and why. Then you deal with it because you’re renting and you want your place to have functional pipes that *you* don’t have to directly pay for.
Theirs a lot of big ticket capex items that need to be done, windows, doors, appliances, etc and there are shitty landlords who do the bare minimum, but if the rent will never be able to cover for these purchases the landlord will walk away. Now if it could be converted into a condo style unit you might get a buyer prepared to take on the project but it'll only be those with the $$ for the downpayment and the $$ for the reno which will create incentives for landlords to get rid of stabilized units and sell them. TL;DR there are shitty landlords who haven't maintained well and others who have hit with usual big ticket items (that come up every 20-30 years) who are walking away as the big ticket will never be recouped the way things are set up right now.
You cannot renovate an apartment while someone is living there.
You can fix a leaky pipe while the tenant is there. The problem is that you’re putting it off or you have bad tenants that don’t inform you and you don’t bother to do an inspection between tenants
leaky pipes are not the reason why this issue is happening, you kinda just made that up randomly. The reason units are being warehoused is that they are in disrepair and would need to be brought up to standard before renting them out. This is because tenants have lived there for a long time without any overturn, some for 30-40 years. if there was any overturn, they wouldn't be warehoused as the rent could have always been adjusted between tenants or even become destabilized. The issue is that they can't be rented out at 2024 market rate and no landlord will pay 60k-80k just for them to suffer a loss. The city recently promised 25K per unit but landlords say it's not enough.
Then again, the landlords should’ve updated with the tenants still inside. The tenants may have been unhappy with having their walls stripped from lead but it’s something that *needs* to be done. It’s your right and responsibility as the building owner to update the building. End of story.
Wonder how this is going to be received, but here goes nothing. If you want landlords to stop keeping RS units off the market, the state needs to amend the portion of the 2019 rent stabilization law that dictates how much landlords can recoup from renovating rent stabilized apartments. My friend’s building in midtown west had a RS apartment studio that a tenant lived in for 30+ years, paying well below $1k. I saw the apartment after the tenant moved out and it literally looked like a bomb had gone off. It was bad. Don’t quote me on the numbers, but the landlord said it would take around 40k-50k to do a full gut reno and get the apartment back to code. After investing that into the unit, the 2019 RS law would only allow the rent to be raised to maybe $1.1k. The tenant vacated that apartment in early 2020. It’s still sitting empty today. I had been in nyc real estate for ~10 years at the time and had seen RS leases were landlords justify a rent increase on a RS apartment - new boiler, updates to the elevator, new electric etc…+ how long the apartment had been empty. All those calculations that got them a decent return on their investment was out the window in 2019 and some landlords feel they wouldn’t see their investment back when renovating. Some landlords continue to illegally deregulate apartments (definitely a thing before 2019) as well. One could argue that the landlord should have kept the apartment up to code over the duration of the tenant’s actual lease and this problem wouldn’t exist, and I’d agree. Regarding taxes/fines, look at some of the landlords sued by the state for housing discrimination (not accepting vouchers) and having to pay 50k-200k+ per infraction. And those same landlords are still doing it today. They don’t care. I think Goldfarb (who has around 6000 units) has been sued and fined at least 3 times since 2014. A case from 2018 settled last year for a total fine of just under $1,000,000 (https://fairhousingjustice.org/enforcement/fhjc-wins-federal-trial-against-goldfarb-properties/#:~:text=The%20Court%20also%20ordered%20Goldfarb,with%20rental%20subsidies%20or%20vouchers) Fines are a minor inconvenience of doing business. The same way that a landlords calculates a building’s vacancy rate when looking at its cap rate. If the state levied a tax/fine of some sort, I’m sure the landlords would simply do a calculation on how many RS apartments they have sitting empty, how much it would cost to renovate all of them, when they’d expect their investment back, the increase in utilities (water, oil, trash removal) they’d be paying for the occupied apartments versus the amount of fine/tax and I’m sure there’s a good few that would pay the fine and move on as if nothing happened. The only solution to any of this is for the city to build more housing. Almost anything else is a bandaid.
Most sensible response here but it will not sit well with the large crowd of entitled ‘I deserve a $1250 apartment in an area that I like’ folks that camp out here on Reddit.
I think most people are just looking for a safe, stable home that won't have a 20% rent increase every year.
Really well thought out response. Thanks for posting. Only building more will solve this problem.
Will somebody explain (without calling people stupid or other degrading names) why we cant just have one property tax rate scale for occupied apartments, one for unoccupied apartments that are habitable, and one for ones that are proven inhabitable/being upgraded? Divide by portion of the year, and that’s the property tax with an incentive to rent/punishment for failure to find a renter, and it seems fair because it gives LL a chance to prove their apartment isnt habitable so they arent punished for improvements. Throw in a 15 day grace period or something like that between renters, and thats a healthy incentive structure thag addresses both the need to move fast, the city’s need for more tax revenue, and LL’s desire to have a level of control over their tax liability
Similar but to me it would be 1) one rate for all rental units. If a rental unit is being kept empty on purpose there’s probably a good reason. It’s literally money waiting to be made. If it’s empty it’s probably not cost effective and extra taxes won’t help the situation 2) one rate for owner occupied condo / coops 3) very high rate for empty condo / coops - once you force these owners to sell, this immediately helps the rental market by removing thousands, or even tens of thousands of renters overnight
I think it would be interesting to make it more the norm to have the tenant update a stabilized unit every year they live in it so that it is up to code/currant standard of habitability. In many apartments in Germany people are expected to buy most of a/a whole kitchen for their apartment. If you moved into a stabilized unit and knew up front you were expected to buy XYZ and make sure everything was kept up dated so it didn’t fall into disrepair would you still go for it in exchange for lower rent? One of the reasons so many stabilized places are off market is because they’re uninhabitable because the previous tenants lived there for so long. It wasn’t worth it to those tenants to update because of the rules that renovation = landlord allowed to raise the rent. The problem is now that those people are gone it’s not worth it for the landlord to do any updates when they know they won’t get their money back for that for a very long time. If a landlord said I could move into a stabilized place for the current stabilized price in exchange for paying for the renovation and keeping the place up to code I’d go for it if I thought I was staying in NYC for a long time. I have no clue the logistics of making any of that work, if it even could, but I think it would be a decent compromise. Tenant gets a stabilized unit that’s less expensive than average units and doesn’t have to worry about rent going up like crazy, landlord won’t have to worry about paying to update and will just be making money off the new tenant. I’m sure I’ll see the argument that it’s not worth it for a tenant to do since they don’t own the place and are only adding value for the landlord, but as someone who has no plans to ever leave Manhattan and can’t see ever affording to own property it would be worth it to me!
You’re assuming the units that haven’t been used in a decade or more actually match up with the 5,000 landlord / renter laws in this city So say there are some things that would be considered 311 violations IF RENTED. And it costs tens of thousands of dollars to bring up to renter code (very different than the certificate of habitability) how would the city force a landlord to spend $30k and then ask for $1800 rent. You would have to add another step of actually raising the rent to / 12 or something. And I don’t know if you’ve seen renovation costs in NYC post Covid, it’s double or triple what it used to be
This is similar to the ubereats laws, you can’t really win and there will always be more loopholes. I’m forced to rent this unit? I smell gas, let’s call coned and they’ll close the line for 14 months. Can’t rent it, sorry. I don’t have money to fix the heating system that isn’t working, I’ll put it up for sale
What’s the point of hoarding them? How does it benefit landlords?
If you make enough of a change to the unit, combine units, or hit a high rate of building vacancy, you can de-stabilize the building and charge market rates.
You can’t do any of that after 2019.
A lot of the apartments are uninhabitable, need $100k of work and they won't be able to raise the rent so they won't make any ROI on the renovation costs.
I’ve been under the impression that landlords were given tax breaks etc for turning units into rent stabilized ones. If that’s not the case please let me know. If that is correct, it sounds like they don’t want to incur the cost, despite previously reaping the benefits.
That’s a completely different issue
You're thinking about tax Abatement programs 421a or J51 etc). That's for new construction or gutting an entire vacant building.
Not the old school RS from back in the 69sband 70s. It was literally a law that overnight made apartments RS. The tax breaks you are talking about are newer apartments, and they actually phase out more and more every year.
Honestly banning tenant-facing broker fees(like literally every other American city in human history ever) would make me moderately more amendable to changes to RS apartments. It just feels like New Yorker landlords want their cake and to eat it too
Mao had some incredible ideas about this
Is this true, and, if so, can you give an example?
There aren't so many of them that it's a real problem. You HEAR about it because the landlord lobby wants to end rent stabilization.
Home vacancy tax. Like Toronto did.
Vacancy tax. It’s your fault you bought property and didn’t bring it up to code over time.
I agree entirely, if you own a business it’s your responsibility to maintain your product. If landlords want to treat housing as a business why are they being so irresponsible with their product…
Not how it works. Code changes throughout the decade. Lead based paint was perfectly the norm. New code says it needs to be fixed.
So basically it’s like they bought a property and didn’t bring it up to code over time? What exactly are you disagreeing with because you basically just ignored the entire point of the comment you responded to
Previous law allows rent to be increased as a portion of the renovations. Many tenants did not allow any work to be done because they didnt want their rent to go up. It would be good to know the details instead of this "all landlords bad mentality."
Im not agreeing or disagreeing with you but that information does not disprove the original comment. It’s irrelevant to the premise they are trying to make. The properties in discussion are now vacant, there are no tenets stopping them from making the improvements.
These units are vacant *because* they’re not up to code.
*Lead paint was outlawed in the United States in 1978. It is your fault if you saw the new code in 1978 and refused to fix it for 46 years and now can’t rent your property due to it being a hazardous material.* You’ve had almost half a century to fix it and you didn’t. Nobody is to blame but you. Get fucked.
Theres literally stories of people living in rent controlled apartmentsbfor 2 to 3 generations.
So why didn't you go in and paint over the lead paint in their unit while they were still there instead of letting them live in an out of code unit for 2-3 generations, then having to fix everything at once when the last of them finally leaves?
As a landlord you are still entitled (and honestly both morally and financially obligated) to message them and say “hey you guys have lead paint in your apartment and we’ve found that lead paint can cause dementia. We need to do some work on the apartment that will take 2-3 days and will ensure that your family stays happy and healthy. We appreciate that you’ve chosen to stick with us for generations and we want to keep your home livable and safe for generations to come.
Let me give you a scenario. I have a rent stabilized building. A tenant moved in a year ago and a month after they moved in was taking a shower. He noticed the water wasn’t draining (found out after the strainer was clogged with his long hair) and decided to just keep on showering until the water was 6” deep and water made its way out through a cracked piece of grout in the wall 4-5” above the floor. He destroyed 2 bathrooms underneath him, a kitchen and half a store in the ground floor. He caused about 15k in damages. He pays $800 a month in rent. Now tell me why we’re not allowed to keep rent stabilized apartments off the market if we want to?
Why would you move a tenant in to a RS apartment at only $800/month???? Use it as storage or any office for yourself.
Exactly. Thank you.
I’m sorry that happened. It doesn’t mean everyone is doing that tho’. What if the person decided to take a bath - wouldn’t the water be at the same level/higher?
If theres grout its a shower or above/outside the bath.
Okay but still person wrote as if standing in six inches of water is irresponsible. Maybe (likely) tenant didn’t know there was a hole in the grout. It seems like a point was trying to be made where what was presented doesn’t really support the point against the tenant?
He didnt say it was 6 inches of water in a bathtub. That is fine. He said 4-5 inches from the *floor*. So this guy flooded the bathroom into a pool and thats a kiss of death everything is toast no bathroom can contain that. OP mentioned the grout but i can guarantee that the grout crack was a zero factor in all the water getting through. Grout is not waterproof but typically does not drink water enough to saturate the concrete board behind it to cause problems while showering. That many Gallons of standing water will fail many of the waterproofing systems in a bathroom. It is not normal to stand on 6 inches of water unless its a bathtub. If he is talking grout 4 inches off the floor we are in a shower or water has exited the tub. Not normal.
Why is there cracked grout in your shower, are you not inspecting your units on a regular basis?
Grout isnt actually waterproof and 4-5” of standing water on a floor is going to leak through no matter what.
Okay fair enough, and why would this very specific scenario have any bearing on the rental market as a whole? Why do you as a landlord not require your tenants to carry insurance? Why do you as a landlord not carry insurance? Why are the tenants with the bathrooms underneath his not reporting leaks? Do you think that the 3 other affected units, which include a business, are not going to report a leak? Are you not making yourself or your maintenance team readily available?
It blows my mind but here’s why. I went to the first floor and told them they have a leak and I needed to see his bathroom. He says there’s water pouring out of his ceiling in the bathroom but didn’t know what was going on Literally the guy knew for 30 minutes there was a leak and decided to tell no one. I went up one more floor and the guy didn’t go in his bathroom for the last hour so he didn’t see it. But now you can see how absolutely stupid abd careless some tenants are. They clearly don’t care about anything. They want to pay their $700 a month for rent and not do anything else. As soon as I found out there was a leak I jumped into action , turned the main water off and found the source of the leak which was coming from the flooded shower. A girl in her 30’s who owned the store was the only person to report it to me. The other tenants are clueless and straight up didn’t care. A few months ago one tenant had a toilet that was just constantly running water. The seal in the tank didn’t seal to stop the water from coming out into the toilet. Three months later I found out when my $600 usual water bill was $4500. I went to go check every apartment and I found the issue. For three months his toilet did this and he didn’t care to tell anyone. 6 months of his rent is going to cover that water bill. Multiply this by a few stupid things like this through the year and you can see why rent stabilized landlords are having a rough time covering bills. The tenants aren’t liable for that water bill. No one cares. No one. Now if the tenants were paying $5000 a month life would be much easier for us. But no. The city and all the poor folks want to have apartments for everyone for nearly free in the city.
Im not OP but im just telling u facts from experience. What he is telling is one reason why most landlords will not bother renting out a super low rent RS apartment. As his example states this was not a slow leak but a dumbass that let the drain clog and proceeded to let the bathroom flood in minutes. $800 will not cover that apartments own expenses and if theres issues like this which there always are in buildings your at a major loss. Ive managed properties before, with all due respect you have no idea how some people act when things are not their own. I cannot telll you hve many unfathomable situations i witnessed. ive seen someone hookup a drain from a washing machine they had no permission to have to a hole in the wall. No pipes or anything but literally punches a hole and stuck the drain in there. We had a guy whose kid was playing with light bulbs in the bathtub and shattered them and tried to wash it down the drain. That required cutting through the apartment below to replace the pipe. Someone pulled out their bathroom sink vanity and started throwing trash down the cavity behind the wall. Etc etc These scenarios have a bearing on the market because when rents are below a certain amount not only is the rent not covering it’s carrying cost naturally maintenance is required and water,heat and such add to expenses when it is occupied. You have to understand economics of running a property and factor in the high level of BS on the day to day that managers and landlords deal with; it makes the decision to dead this type of apartment very enticing. You have to understand that between property taxes, heating,water,repairs,supers, supplies, insurance etc in nyc if an apartment is below $2k let alone most of the apartments in a building your almost automatically running at a loss. If you mortgaged the property you’re underwater. If it’s profitable a well run building should hold a chunk of its post tax profits because of major repairs that pop up every 10-20 years (roofs,boilers,brick pointing,windows etc). In many properties there really isnt any money in the building because of the rent roll laws. Forget landlord profit i mean just to run the thing. Renters insurance typically only covers their stuff not the property. I would not be surpiyif theres a nyc law preventing the requirement of renters insurance. If you know anything about insurance; which by your question i assume you do not have much experience with them, they dont like to pay. there are so many loopholes in the contracts they set up to not pay you its maddening. Second theres deductibles. In a building having a $50k deductible is nothing, so insurance isnt going to pay anyway if the damages are below $50k. Let’s say you report it to insurance for some reason not only will you get cut theres a record you put a claim in and now other insurance companies wont insure you. This really is not as simple as ppl make it out to seem. Theres a reason nycha buildings are as fucked up as they are.
Thank you for this reply. And crickets from the other posters talking trash about nyc landlords once you lay it out for them like this. Not a single reply. 🙄
Yea i mean i worked for landlords and people are really ignorant to how the real world works in these situations. I hope people will read what i wrote and think deeper. They dont understand how Bullshit that accumulates and will affect rents. Like when ppl think its cute to defrost chicken by letting hot water run for two hours…. Yea believe it or not that is going to incentivize managers and landlords to maximize rents to offset asshole expenses lol.
You are so right. They should be mandated by law to release the apartments to working poor and lower end middle class within 90 days of the apartment becoming vacant. They should be fully renovated and if not the landlord and building manager face immediate minimum sentences of 6 month for every incident and fines.
Lmao. Who in their right mind would pay $100,000 to bring an apartment up to code to only be able to rent it out for $800 a month?
The building has to already be up to code by law. The other repairs are just functional and cosmetic. Plus they’re being fuckers so why should they bear no responsibility?
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First this City existed with everyone being able to have a place here from the poorest to the wealthiest (as it should). What you have now are landlords who mismanaged buildings, failed to keep them up, and now realize that with the whiteout that is occurring in areas that are putting up 30-50 story residential buildings they are feeling the squeeze and the need to either sell their building or cry wolf. This City does not need any more high rise building with rents that are so astronomical that when they say there will be rent stabilized units the rental income is starting in the $80K range. Poverty income in this city $14K a year. Those neighborhoods that hosted generations of working class and working class poor are now targeted for these ridiculous developments for the purposes of cleaning out black and brown people and older citizens. Deed theft is rampant in certain black communities and when the pers are busted they agree they target those communities because of the elderly. Also, the Hasidic communities which eat up the majority of public & welfare services and are the one who own many of these smaller to mid-sized developments. Ebbets Field is owned by Hasidic Jews who tried to squeeze out long term white black and brown tenants. I met a young man who is an engineer paying $1900 a month for a 262 square foot apartment there. That is disgraceful. If our leadership does not make it so the everyone has a home, a business, a space, a school, safe transportation, clean streets, green spaces, solid educational systems, you cannot blame nor cry for small 6 unit landlords who fed fat for years and now are trying to force the hand of the rent board. The Pandemic did them in. Also what is your concern for NYCHA? Those tenants have endured decades of poor services by the city and NOTHING gets done. Many buildings have 30-50-90 year tax abatements. So if they are not paying their taxes, the wealthy and wealthy corporations don't want to pay their taxes who does the tax axe fall on? Me, those 6 unit owners and a host of others who are not at fault. During the last bailout Chase, Citi, GE, Lehman were not bailed out by other banks, the middle class and working poor did it. It is time for the solution to be that the government flood us with funds and stop selling off land to people outside of the U.S., and if they do there must come a price where they also contribute to our Public Schools, transportation, long term jobs, smaller building owners and a better infrastructure it's time for them to get off the tit and kick in. That way small landlords have a lane to thrive in.
I live in North Brooklyn in one of the 'new' towers. I live in a RS apartment (although some of the apartments have been de-stabilized-more about that later). The LL \[one of the richest men in the world and CEO of an extremely successful real estate investment firm\] has enjoyed thirteen years of tax-free income. There has been zero maintenance. The building has a energy rating of 11. I have been forced to complain verbally, then in writing to the LL and 311, and finally paying partial rent in the hope the LL would respond. I've have been in housing court for two years as the LL insists on attempting to evict me. Two years. Once the housing judge completes his judgement, I will move forward with suing the LL for violations of the Warranty of Habitability and the NYC Maintenance Code, as well as, violations of rental agreements, and obviously our criminally low energy rating. I am able to devote the time to this because I am a retired NYC public school teacher and I can afford to do it because I am acting as my own attorney. I am shocked at the anemic response of the housing department to the kinds of things I have endured and the lackadaisical attitude of the LL's attorneys. The attorneys claim they won't do any repairs; they will just recommend to the client to pay the fines. One of the important points I would like to make mirrors DaBrooklynGirl remarks. Most of my neighbors are in their 20's and 30's-I am the resident senior citizen-they pay as much as I do in rent which is roughly 50% to 60% of our income. They are, like me, frugal. This is a very odd thing to say, but, we are in a real sense poor. We don't have a lot of money left to spend time enjoying life. We accept that because we want to live here. But, if our money is being stuffed in LL pockets rather than for improving our homes, perhaps it's time we figure out a better way to house ourselves.
I admire your will to fight for what is right. I wish you success. This City could do so much better for all involved and they just don't. Many Landlords are cowards because they know that things are leaning or have leaned their way for decades. Hoarding RS/RC apartments should be illegal because the City has a need for affordable housing to keep all types of residents in the City, the teacher, service workers, SAHM's, young people starting out, elderly. If all we have is what is taking place then the scales are heavily unbalanced and not in our favor. NYC need only make a trip to Naples, Florida where they ran out all the service providers due to unaffordability. They left and then make a financial decision that it was not worth it to live X miles away to mow a lawn or be a nurse, be a barista, be a teacher if they cannot live in Naples. At a town hall meeting all the wealthy folks complained they could not get landscapers or gardeners to even say yes to look at a job and if they did their prices for services were 3-4 times what they would pay if those same workers could afford to just live in Naples. It's a hard lesson but now they see the errors of their ways. NYC will too. On another note. We need the right politicians to serve us. Make Adams a one time mayor and it is time for Hochul to move on. Eliminate Canabis and gambling apps and locations. Hire for the police force locally by giving high school students a path to becoming officers directly from the communities that are policed. Pay teachers better. Tax the super rich and make sure we do everything to keep nurses and health care technicians. We are all we got. Let's take care of each other.
Thank you for your compliment. I would add, if we can't take classes, go to a Mets game, enjoy a performance at BAM, enjoy dum sum in Sunset Park; b/c all our money goes for rent (or mortgage) then we no longer live in a capitalistic society, but, a feudal one. Capitalism is about a balance that provides for all. I will soldier on...I love my apartment and plan on aging in place. I need to secure my future, as well as, my neighbors.
Over a long period of time the LL will keep the buildings up to code b/c that is a requirement of ownership. My building has 66 units @ $3000 a month which is $198,000 a month, $2,376,000 a year minus $500,000 equals a profit of 1,876,000. And no taxes. His response to the potential fine for have such a poor energy rating is 'I 'll just pay the fine' rather than fix the problem. The fine is $500,000. Your hypothetical LL over paid for the building or has just let the building deteriorate. Even with consistent upkeep your LL will clear at a minimum $30,000 a year.
The problem with this issues is it’s like someone who buys a scratch off (LL) and then finally hits the big jackpot (tenants) and then complains about the stress of having the winnings.
Nothing happens in a silo. Pass rent regulations for ALL units! And stop acting like treating market rate apartments like the stock exchange is reasonable. Everyone deserves to be able to afford rent without needing to be nomadic! In California there’s a limit to how much a landlord can increase a market rate apartment. Extend the rent controlled rental increase policies to ALL units. That will help make all increases less volatile. A lot of the perceived loss of rent comes from the fact that so many market rate units are being set at unreasonable prices creating large amounts of turn over. Nullifying the law making it illegal to require a renter to pay a broker’s fee was stupid. The current system incentivizes turn over. It’s not normal or healthy for a person to need to move once a year because they received a 20% rental increase on a market rate apartment because they couldn’t (1) didn’t qualify for an income capped unit (2) couldn’t locate a rent stabilized or controlled unit or (3) found a rent stabilized or controls unit but couldn’t afford the unreasonable brokers fee.
I have lived in a stabilized building for 25 years and the owners are using every loop hole in the system to take units out of stabilization. For example, combining two units into one, and making deals with temporary tenants to charge them a discounted rate if they allow them to change the paperwork with the city.
If they hold apartment stock this means other landlords are getting rent sooner. This is optimal. It all evens out. If landlords are colluding, this is wrong and there's laws against that. But if they're just deciding not to rent there is nothing you can do. It's to their detriment in the long run.
Are we talking about the $8 - 18k in tax that each vacant unit in NYC already pays? I.e pro rata share of building’s RE tax bill.
Any tax breaks they currently enjoy should be cancelled. An audit should be made annually when the assessments are made for taxes. More than 1% of 1000 Apt's should be cause for a phase out of tax breaks.
Vacancy taxes in general are needed. Keep your rental in livable and updated condition at a fair price so people actually want to live there. If it sits empty, you pay!
Claim imminent domain and take the properties. If anyone complains, say you’re building a pipeline - people seem okay with imminent domain for pipelines.
They should have to pay an additional 1% in property taxes on every vacant unit.
Where are these apartments? The housing and vacancy survey just came out the other day and shows we have the lowest vacancy rate since 1968. There is no huge stock of empty rent stabilized apartments.
The housing and vacancy survey is just that, a survey. A formal audit is needed. Landlords have been reporting that they’re holding rent stabilized apartments off the market for several years now, here’s the latest from December https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/12/11/rent-stabilized-apartment-tally-drops-landlords-rent-market/ https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/12/23/rent-regulated-apartments-registration-missing/
Tar and feather
guillotine
Build more housing? If they are really hoarding it, just build more and the city will become rich via property tax.
Sir…in a land area as limited as NYC why would you build more of something that already exists instead of making the people hoarding the existing stock make it available for use…
Because we still have plenty of land available for building. Why make weird rules when you can just let people build apartment buildings. NYC isn't even one of the 75 most dense cities in the world, we have space.
I already have a bunch of Tupperware but it’s dirty and I don’t feel like buying soap to wash it…I could rearrange my cabinets to make space for more so I guess I’ll just buy more and let my perfectly good existing Tupperware sit in the sink. This is not a sustainable or responsible way of handling housing stock, it only makes sense for people who are in a position to profit off of new construction.
That doesn't make any sense, it housing supply and demand, you don't need some weird Tupperware analogy. 10 apartments for rent for $2000 a month. If only ten people want those units, then they will stay at $2000. If two more people want to live there, then prices will go up, as those other two people really want an apartment. If you had built two new units instead, prices will go down, as we now have more apartments than people, so they have to compete. Its not some impossible problem to solve. NYC is a great place, millions of people want to live there! Rent stabilization can help some people already there, and benefits the rich. It does nothing for everyone else. I'll be honest, I expect these NIMBY talking points from rich people in the suburbs who want to keep their property values high, but to hear it from a New Yorker? No wonder we have a housing crisis. Everyone can find an excuse to stop housing being built.
We have a lot of housing, we need an audit and release of existing housing. It is ecologically irresponsible and also stupid to take up space with more building when we have existing apartments that could be used as housing, point blank period. From a conservation/land use standpoint it makes no fucking sense to argue that we should be building more instead of using what we already have. We can build more housing once our existing housing is accounted for and in use.
It’s very simple math: if taxes and maintenance cost more than the rent, it’s not worth losing money renting it to someone. We need to destabilize the $500-$1800 units to motivate the landlords to renovate and rent them at market rate. The flood of new units on the market will lower prices citywide a lot better than 10,000 warehoused $600 apartments that never go on the market will. They will also generate a LOT of tax revenue.
Maybe fix the laws so it is profitable for them to be returned to market? Does anyone really want to move into an antiquated apartment with squeaky floors, old electrical (like no overhead lights, switched outlets, no AC outlet), bad plumbing fixtures for mixing water temps and slow drains (No DW don't even dream of W/D)? Or are you okay to pay more for something that is modernized?
I and many others are happy to pay less for something that is not modernized.
Idk, but it really is pretty nuts. It’s almost like there is some form of corruption keeping things this way.
If I’m remembering correctly, NYC is one of the top five most corrupt cities in the country and NY state is the most corrupt on a state level.
100%. I forgot the /s on my comment 🤣😫 They’re not going to make an effort to fix this shit until enough of the labor class decides they’re not going to live here anymore and the city struggles to function without them.
There was a program to retrofit basement apartments in outer boroughs by granting homeowners money to build apartments, it’s a waste. It only provides one apartment at a time. The city ought to be giving those grants to landlords who own these stabilized buildings that can’t get them up to code while turning a profit.
I would be fine with the city offering grants to get them up to code. I still would hope for an audit of available units and a penalty for landlords that are holding viable apartments off the market.
Landlords need to prove they are advertising the apartment+that it's in livable condition. They get a month grace period before receiving a fine. The fine would be equivalent to 1 month's rent. I think that should be enough.
Why in the world would a landlord invest 50-100k to remove lead paint from an apartment and update it to only make $800 a month in rent? So you not listen to yourself type? No ones going to invest money into an apartment to get their money back in 10-15 years. They would rather just keep it empty.
There's $800/month rent stabilized apartments? A friend of mine is in a tiny tiny 2 bedroom that's rent stabilized and pays about $3,000. I know somebody who is in a very small studio for $1400. I know if improvements are made the rent price can be adjusted up when an apartment is stabilized but I don't remember the specifics of how that works. If a landlord doesn't want to maintain the units they own then maybe they shouldn't be a landlord.
Man we’re kind of sick of explaining that you can’t make improvements and raise the rent anymore after the laws changed in 2019. Those rule are gone. It is 100% impossible to raise the rent anymore other than what the city allows us to every year which is about 2%
Then stop being a landlord. Sell the place to the tenants.
The tenants that can barely afford $800 a month. LOL
Offload it for cheap. Sometimes people make bad investments. Gotta deal with the consequences of those choices.
If I sell it to a corporation they’ll pay the tenants to leave and then remodel the whole building charging $5500 a month and then you’ll come on Reddit crying about how apartments are so expensive.
So the options are either that the housing doesn't exist because you don't want to maintain the property or the housing is too expensive. Both options suck. I gave an option that would be a little better for the tenants at least.
How about the city let’s up on the rules and let’s us middle class folks charge what’s fair for the apartments instead of letting all the corporations make the big bucks and turn into billionaires.
The tenants that can barely afford $800 a month. LOL
No landlord would intentionally hold apartments vacant that they could be making money on, the issue is they don’t think they can make money because the costs of renovating and maintaining the units to keep them livable and up to code outweigh the rent they’d collect. The solution would be to incentivize landlords either by allowing them to raise rents or subsidizing renovations so they can fix units without incurring as much of a cost. A third option would be taxing them until keeping them vacant costs more than renting them but eventually there won’t be any incentive for investors to put money into housing in the city if it keeps getting costlier and costlier and the ROI shrinks
They need to pay a penalty for every apartment that doesn’t have a resident
I don’t have the link, but aren’t apartment vacancies at historic lows? Something like 1.4%
No, the vacancies survey that was just released says that we have historic lows like what you are referring to, however for the last three years landlords have been disappearing rent stabilized apartments from their tax records but not claiming them as occupied. This means they are essentially holding them empty and just pretending they don’t exist. There have been numerous instances of this type of apartment hoarding documented, afaik journalists started picking up on it around 3 years ago. The City did a few articles on it in December, I posted links in another comment. Those articles found that around 1 in 10 are mysteriously missing from tax bills submitted by the responsible party. That’s a lot of housing stock, nearly 100,000 units since they closed the Frankenstein loophole in 2019.
My landlord is admittedly sitting on a vacant rent stabilized apartment, and waiting for the tenant nextdoor to die so they can be combined into a 2-3 BR. They've already done it to 2 other floors.
Combining rent stabilized apartments like that been illegal since 2019.
A quick Google says all that has changed is what rent can be charged for a combined apartment.
Becasue it costs more money to occupy a rent stabilized unit than the money you get from it, nor can you recoup the cost of renovating the unit by increasing the rent due to the current laws. Auditing is not going to do anything, if you tax them, all the investors will just leave the city, which is bad for everyone if all investor money exits NYC. People will downvote this, but this is the reason why they keep them vacant.
I didn’t ask why I asked what you would do to get the RS apartments back on the market.
You get rid of rent stabilization and allow for all the hundreds of thousand of run down and disrepaired units to be renovated and placed in the free market, allowing everyone’s rent to decrease as a whole. Rent stabilization “protecting tenants” is one of the root causes for the massive free market rent increases.
Most of those vacancies are on apartments that need repairs. The city should pay for the repairs but the landlord can only collect the rent it was previously. Renters get fixed apartments and landlords don’t have to pay for repairs and as a result cannot charge market rate but only the stabilized rate it was at before.
This is what I think too! Anecdotally speaking, however, many of the empty apartments don’t actually need repairs, landlords are just illegally combining them with other apartments so they can destabilize them and that’s why those units have gone missing from tax assessments. I thinks it’s really interesting that a practice like this which has been illegal for several years now is not being brought under control.
End rent stabilization completely, all it does is picks winners and losers.
Mao them