{"id":279938,"date":"2026-06-27T16:57:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T16:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/279938\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T16:57:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T16:57:27","slug":"mamdanis-rent-freeze-makes-owning-stabilized-buildings-clearly-unsustainable-for-nyc-landlords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/279938\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze makes owning stabilized buildings \u2018clearly unsustainable\u2019 for NYC landlords"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rent-stabilized landlords face a harsh reality: rising costs and capped revenues.<\/p>\n

On Thursday night, the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board made good<\/a> on Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s key campaign promise to \u201cfreeze the rent\u201d on one- and two-year leases for the Big Apple\u2019s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units to the chagrin of some landlords.<\/p>\n

\u201cExpense items are not proportional to the income the properties generate,\u201d said landlord Lav Bauta, whose firm Zion Equities owns about 800 New York City rent-stabilized units and manages 4,000 apartments. \u201cRent-stabilized properties incur the same, or greater, expenses as their fair-market counterparts: insurance, wages, supplies, elevator service, utilities, etc. There is no support or control mechanism to cap expenses while incomes have been capped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Landlords<\/p>\n

Landlords are up in arms over Thursday\u2019s vote to free rents for rent-stabilized units. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The median collected rent in a property that is over 90% rent-stabilized in 2025 was $1,395 per month<\/a>, according to NYU Furman Center, which Bauta said is \u201croughly equal to the monthly operating cost of such a unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Zion\u2019s 4242 Ithaca St. in Elmhurst, Queens, two units were rented below that figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see how this is clearly unsustainable, and we are not even making considerations for debt service which was foundational for providing the capital needed to perform ongoing repairs and reinvestment at the varying sites,\u201d Bauta added.<\/p>\n

The RGB\u2019s decision came hours after the public resignation<\/a> of one of the RGB\u2019s nine members, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its own data<\/a> during the lengthy process to decide whether to adjust rents.<\/p>\n

According to the RGB\u2019s own research<\/a>, for buildings that contain rent-stabilized apartments, costs increased 5.3% between April 2025 and March 2026, and are projected to tick up 4.1% the following year. Taxes, which carry the highest weight in the year\u2019s Index, went up 2.6%. The greatest increases, however, were in fuel, surging 11% \u2014 followed by insurance, climbing 10.5%.<\/p>\n

\"Lav<\/p>\n

Lav Bauta has 800 rent-stabilzed units in his portfolio. Lav Bauta<\/p>\n

James Whelan, president of the real estate trade group Real Estate Board of New York, echoed Smyth\u2019s sentiment, saying the RGB \u201cignored its own data and made a terrible decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outcome, Whelan said, is \u201cless investment in maintenance and repairs, accelerating the deterioration of the housing stock that millions of New Yorkers call home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, landlord attorney Nativ Winiarsky noted, \u201cOwners who lack sufficient revenue may be unable to make required repairs, resulting in violations, fines, emergency repair charges, tax liens, and, in some cases, court-appointed administrators or the loss of the property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late last year, in the wake of Mamdani\u2019s mayoral win, a number of rent-stabilized landlords rushed to sell their buildings<\/a> for pennies in anticipation of what materialized on Thursday night in East Harlem. And due to an inability to afford renovations of stabilized units because rent charges won\u2019t make them break even, at least 50,000 units have been warehoused for years \u2014 which only drives up prices for market-rate homes due to scarcity, according to critics.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/p>\n

At Zion Equities\u2019 4242 Ithaca St. in Elmhurst, Queens, there are rent-stabilized units. Lev Bauta<\/p>\n

Rent freezes by the RGB are rare, having occurred only three prior times in its history \u2014 for one-year periods in 2015, 2016 and 2020, all during Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s term. This is the first time ever that it instituted the cap on two-year leases.<\/p>\n

Mamdani called it a \u201chistoric victory for New York City tenants,\u201d while mom-and-pop landlord group Small Property Owners of New York called the vote \u201can absolute farce,\u201d and New York Apartment Association, a trade association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized units, promised that the freeze \u201cwill destroy the living conditions for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Real estate developer Sam Eshaghoff, founder of West Egg Development, has nearly a dozen properties in New York City with rent-stabilized units, including the newly opened Hana building at 45-10 215th Pl., in Bayside, Queens.<\/p>\n

\"Rents<\/p>\n

Rents cannot go up in one- or two-year leases for rent-stabilized leases, including those at Hana building at 45-10 215th Place in Queens. REAL New York<\/p>\n

\"Landlords,<\/p>\n

Landlords, like Sam Eshaghoff, who have rent-stabilized units in their portfolio, are alarmed about rent freezes. Courtesy of Sam Eshaghoff<\/p>\n

\u201cBy freezing rents in the face of rising operating expenses, regulators have decisively decided that the economic return of owning a rent-stabilized building will trend ever closer to zero,\u201d Eshaghoff said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLandlords don\u2019t set rents; they only meet the market where the demand is. When there is no incentive to build new housing, and we have a housing shortage, the free market tenants will fight for the remaining apartments, and this higher demand will cause the market-rent prices to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rent-stabilized landlords face a harsh reality: rising costs and capped revenues. On Thursday night, the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[58541,22987,2954,107484,9,24,56,63,65,64,122,15021,59255,107485,82],"class_list":["post-279938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-christina-smyth","tag-elmhurst","tag-landlords","tag-lav-bauta","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-queens","tag-rent-guidelines-board","tag-sam-eshaghoff","tag-zion-equities","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}