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Comment on New York's Rent Regulation Fightparent

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Urgh, when I saw the downvotes I figured it would be people who knew nothing about NYC's rent laws except had heard the phrase "rent stabilized" and decided for themselves what it meant. And I was right.

Every vacant apartment in the city can be rented by the landlord at market rates. The price controls complained of by the top commenter do not exist. There is no such thing as a law saying "This vacant apartment? You can only charge $1000 for it, even though it would normally rent for $3000."

Is that clear? Or would you rather just downvote, despite not knowing anything about the city's rent laws?

That's simply not true. Vacancy decontrol for a rent stabilized apartment only kicks in if the legal rent for an apartment has reached $2500. So it is very much the case that a vacant apartment can be subject to rent stabilization and cannot be rented for whatever the market will bear.

See this page for worked examples: http://www.nycrgb.org/html/guidelines/vacancy.html

That's completely untrue. I live in a rent-stabilized apartment I rented at (moderately) below-market rates three years ago. Had the landlord not done what they claim are $40,000 worth of renovations, they would have had to rent it to me at something like half the market rate.

This seems to explain the rules determining the rent you can charge for a vacant rent-stabilized apartment: http://www.nycrgb.org/html/guidelines/vacancy.html. Am I misunderstanding this page?

I don't think that's entirely true. Almost every new building has to have 20% of the capacity rented to "Affordable living" standards - far below market rate.

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