Rangel is going to cost me my rent stabilized apartment...

sweet tea

caseopele wrote: [quote=doctorj]* landlords who cannot cover their costs do not maintain properties. Over time, this leads to deteriorating buildings in deteriorating neighborhoods

Landlords of non rent stabilized buildings do this as well, and sometimes they do it out of greed not because they can't cover costs.


true. my last LL in chicago -- where there is no rent stabilization -- was a disaster about fixing things. heat out (in CHICAGO), etc. our rent was in line with other places in the area, but not cheap. he got away with it because location was good and moving is a pain in the ass.

so far, the maintenance situation has gotten better in this building as time goes by and -- in principle -- rent becomes less market. i cede that it's been a short period.

doctorj

Livetotravel wrote: I have 2 people standing in front of me as I write this who tell me that have been hit with 20-25% increases for market rate apartments. Obviously higher (triple) that which the Rent Stabilization Board authorized for 2-year leases on stabilized apartments.

20%-25% lately sounds about right on a cheap apartment if it hadn't risen in a while before that. I have a record low fixed rate 30-year mortgage, which is the ultimate in rent stabilization, but my taxes doubled and my other carrying expenses just went up 20%. Heating oil doubled in three years and then doubled again over the past year; water and insurance and the building's shared gas and electricity are way up. Enjoy your mandated 4.5% p.a. while it lasts -- I doubt it's enough to cover your landlord's extra expenses this year, and that's an untenable situation. When lots of people consume more than they're paying for, before long something has to give.

Further to what I said before about alternative ways to obtain stable housing costs without government fiat, the simplest and perhaps best way is to DIY. Move in to a place that's e.g. 10% cheaper than what you can afford, and put the difference each month into a high yield savings account. Every year, you can decide your own rent increase, e.g. the same increase as your salary, adjusting what goes into or out of the savings account and what goes to the landlord accordingly. Takes a little discipline, but should be sufficient to give you stable predictable costs for a very long time. It's the same strategy I use with my condo: bought a place cheaper than I could afford, put the difference into extra principal payments and savings, adjusted yearly. For me, it's greatly lessened the current price shock.

Caseopele wrote:
So you benefited from someone who stayed put longer? And NY isn't really like any other city, people continue to move here from other places regardless of the housing situation.

Yes, after some housing stress, I benefited from someone else's extremely good fortune, having previously lucked into a situation that was numerically fixed in 1923 and not allowed to rise with inflation. The housing was created for the poor and I didn't deserve it, what I deserved was to pay a free market price in a free market, but there was almost no rental availability in that city and no free market. 10 year waiting lists or astronomical prices. This is the experience that convinced me that price controls on housing by fiat are wrong and worse for everyone in the long run. I've rented in NY, rented in a city with tighter controls than NY, and in one with no controls. The price/availability/stress in the city with tighter controls was worse than here, and in the city with no controls it was easier to find something that met my needs and budget, even when I was on a very low income. NY was in the middle, with my rent moderately higher than it should have been, due to moderately restricted supply, due to moderate overall market distortion. If you've been in NY 27 years, you probably haven't tried renting in other major world cities with greater or lesser price controls, and seen what effects are. Cities which, just like NY, are the biggest in their respective countries and to which people continue to stream from other places.