AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
The NYC rent-stabilized housing market is struggling. Sales have slowed since 2019 rent law changes, with properties lingering longer and sellers cutting prices by about 10%. This threatens small owners’ financial stability, hindering their ability to maintain properties. Tenants suffer from deteriorating conditions due to landlords’ financial constraints, while rent freezes create tension and inefficient housing allocation. Warehousing further reduces affordable rentals. To improve the situation, Korchak suggests amending the 2019 HSTPA to allow owners to recoup more from improvements, quickly returning over 50,000 warehoused apartments to the market and boosting affordable housing options.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
The broader market reflects these struggles. Sales of rent-stabilized properties have slowed since the 2019 rent law changes, and many listings linger on the market far longer than typical. To attract buyers, sellers are cutting prices by around 10% on average. For small owners hoping to sell or refinance, that erosion in value directly threatens their financial survival.
For tenants, the picture is equally bleak. When landlords cannot afford upkeep, it is renters who remain in deteriorating apartments with broken boilers, leaky roofs, or unsafe wiring. Rent freezes also pit tenants and owners against each other over shrinking resources, and by locking some households into large apartments they no longer need, they squeeze families with children into smaller, less suitable units. Far from helping renters, the freeze risks degrading their living conditions. And more warehousing of units just means fewer affordable rental units and more renters left out of the market entirely.
Instead of political promises, Korchak argues for pragmatic reform. Specifically, she calls for amending the 2019 HSTPA provisions that restricted the amount of money owners can recoup from their improvements and capital investments to the units (IAIs and MCIs) to allow owners to bring over 50,000 warehoused apartments back to market quickly. “That would make an impact on affordable housing,” she emphasizes, far more than new construction schemes that take years, if they happen at all.
