Proposed Rent Guidelines for October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 (Revised)

Rule status: Proposed

Agency: RGB

Comment by date: June 27, 2025

Rule Full Text
2025-RGB-Public-Notice-1.pdf

Pursuant to its statutory mandate, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board (“RGB”) is proposing rent guidelines for October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026.

The prior proposed rule for Apartment and Loft Order 57 adopted April 30, 2025 is withdrawn. The board has received written and in-person testimony from many parties with an interest in this process both prior to the vote taken on April 30 and since. In particular, the Board received testimony on the impact of potential rent increases on tenants whose incomes are not keeping pace with the rising cost of living. As the board implements its mandate to consider the cost of operating rent stabilized buildings while maintaining reasonable rents, it must also consider the economic uncertainty reflected in much of the testimony that the Board has received to date. Therefore the board voted to restart the rulemaking process and approved proposed adjustments for two-year leases that have more flexibility than what was determined on April 30. In view of the Board’s withdrawal of the Apartment and Loft Order 57 adopted April 30, 2025, the prior proposed rule for Hotel Order 55 adopted April 30, 2025 is also withdrawn.

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Mail: Rent Guidelines Board, 1 Centre Street Room/Floor: Suite 2210 ; New York, New York 10007

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Online comments: 10

HP

Each year at the rent guidelines board hearings we hear elected officials and tenants tell us to open our books to prove we are experiencing hardship. As you can see from the attached coverage, the assistance programs at HCR do not offer assistance even when you open your books.
Comment attachment
Housing-Agencys-Hardship-Program-Fails-Distressed-Landlords.pdf
Comment added June 5, 2025 6:36pm
NYC Housing Provider

On the campaign trail Zohran Mamdani tells reporters that programs exist to assist distressed housing providers, but no such program can be found when calling his office, HPD or DHCR.
Comment attachment
Mysterious-Landlord-Hardship-Program-Cited-by-Zohran-Mamdani.pdf
Comment added June 5, 2025 6:38pm
Kafka NY

Housing providers face extreme hardship due to rising taxes and city driven costs. The few programs that exist for us are a maze of red tape and hidden traps as you can see from this attached article from the real deal about the DHCR hardship program. Please keep this in mind and help us raise the rents to match the rate at which property tax, utilities and labor costs have increased which is 8-30%.
Comment attachment
kafka.pdf
Comment added June 5, 2025 6:43pm
Envious of Rochdale

Recently Rochdale Village, a cornerstone of the Mitchell-Lama program, has been pushed by NYS HCR to raise maintenance fees by 22%. HCR determined this amount was required to ensure maintenance was occurring, vendors were being paid, and that sufficient reserves existed for emergencies. Being party of Mitchel-Lama they do not pay property tax and other city fees that private landlords do. So without the largest expense that most buildings face, Rochdale still cannot make ends meet with out a 22% increase. How can private owners who do have taxes and other municipal costs expect to make ends meet with only 3.75-6.75% increases? Please review the data and remember that you are failing NY when you fail to raise the rents to sustainable levels.
Comment attachment
rochdale.pdf
Comment added June 5, 2025 6:49pm
Audra Bonacki

The rent increase proposals are not in line with cost of living. And the percentage increases in the last 2 years have been devastating. It is not the burden of renters to line the pockets of landlords. We shouldn’t lose our home at the hands of greed. We all understand rents increase, but at the rates you’re proposing, you will absolutely force people out of their homes and where do you expect us to live? You are literally eliminating true affordable housing in the 5 boroughs. Enough greed. Be reasonable and fair.

Comment added June 8, 2025 12:17pm
Daniel Kowalski, Foundation for Economic Education

Of the approximated 2.3 million apartments in New York City, almost a million of them are rent-stabilized. Unlike rent control, where rent prices are fixed, rent stabilization allows increases at a regulated rate. The politicians behind these price controls aim to make housing costs “fairer” for tenants at the expense of landlords. But the unintended result of these policies, as seen in the 1970s, is that landlords will even abandon properties because the costs outweigh the benefits, with whole neighborhoods suffering as a result. Unfortunately, elected officials and their voters often forget these historical lessons. In 2019, New York City expanded rent stabilization. Now, as we repeat past mistakes, we are also repeating the consequences.

Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act

From a renter’s perspective, a rent-stabilized apartment means lower housing costs than what would occur in the free market. From a landlord’s perspective, owning these units was never the best investment, but there were ways to work around the disadvantages. Before 2019, landlords could get their apartment delisted from rent stabilization by performing gut renovations removing almost everything except the exterior walls. This was very expensive, but it offered a way out.

That changed with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. This law permanently stabilized apartments, meaning that annual rent increases are to be kept below market rates. It also eliminated the policy of preferential rates, which had allowed landlords to offer discounted rates upon renewal. Now if a landlord offers a lower rent to fill a vacancy, he must continue offering that rate every year.

Another way for landlords to increase their revenues was through a legal rent increase of up to 20% for new tenants after the old ones moved out. But the 2019 law eliminated that option, too—landlords can only charge the same rent the previous tenants would have paid if they had stayed.

The 2019 law also makes it more difficult to evict tenants. A landlord’s business depends on cash flow, and eviction is seen only as a last resort. Tenants are ejected when they cause disturbances or they stop paying rent. But courts can now stall the process for a year. The law also dismantled the Tenant Blacklist, making it harder to vet potential tenants.

Unintended Results
In 2022, 176 rent-stabilized apartment units in New York City were foreclosed on, and that number has doubled every year. As of April 2025, over 2,000 units are in danger of defaulting on their mortgages. As in the 1970s, many owners face operating costs that outweigh their revenues. The Rent Guidelines Board estimates that 10% of rent-stabilized units lose money for their landlords.

If an owner sells his building, the new owner must keep the stabilized units at the same regulated rent. That makes these buildings unattractive investments, guaranteed to keep bleeding cash. Should the properties go into foreclosure and the banks be unable to find new buyers, tenants could ultimately be evicted. This huge win for tenants at the expense of landlords turns out to be a lose-lose situation for everyone.

What Happens Next
Property owners are limited: they can’t increase revenues to cover costs, and they can’t remove tenants who won’t pay rent. Even for a profitable building, one or two tenants not paying their rent can change the operating numbers into a loss. Every month spent fighting to get them out is another month without rent.

During the 1970s, building owners ignored basic maintenance because they could not afford it. Property taxes stopped being paid, buildings were abandoned, and entire neighborhoods declined. Some owners even torched their buildings because insurance payouts were the only value that could be extracted.

As the negative results continue to accumulate, there will hopefully be people with the wisdom to reverse these policies before bad becomes worse. But one of the frontrunners to be the city’s next mayor is the same former governor who signed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act into law.
Comment attachment
Rent-Stabilization-Proponents-Hate-to-Learn-from-the-Past-FEE.pdf
Comment added June 8, 2025 1:13pm
Ms. Luz Robert

I am writing to express my support for a rent freeze. I believe this is an important issue, especially for those who are low-income tenants. The current rent percentage increase being proposed is simply too high and will place an undue burden on many tenants.

Tenants face various financial challenges, and a significant rent increase would exacerbate these difficulties. A rent freeze would provide much-needed relief and stability, allowing tenants to allocate their limited resources toward other essential expenses.

I kindly urge you to consider the impact of the proposed rent increase on low-income tenants and support the implementation of a rent freeze. Thank you for your attention to this matter and for considering my perspective.

Comment added June 9, 2025 6:41pm
Rafael E. Cestero via Crains

“At the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), one of the largest mission-driven lenders and servicers in the country dedicated solely to multifamily housing, we have a unique window into the financial and physical health of the city’s rent-stabilized housing. The data we collect tells a troubling story.”

“Since 2020, operating expenses across our portfolio have
increased by 21%, including a 6% increase in the past year
alone. Meanwhile, rent collections plummeted during the
pandemic and have yet to recover. Collections in our rent-
stabilized buildings average around 92%, meaning owners are
still losing nearly 10 % of their anticipated income. That might
not sound like much, but when your margins are already
razor-thin, it can be the difference between keeping the lights
on and falling into financial distress.
The signs of distress are everywhere. In our permanent
servicing portfolio, the percentage of loans delinquent by 60
days or more tripled in the last year from 3.7% of unpaid
principal balance to 9% in 2024. That’s $109 million in unpaid
principal tied to 2,043 homes. As a result, enforcement
actions like foreclosures are on the rise. As of December
2024, 16 loans in our permanent portfolio were undergoing
enforcement.”
Comment attachment
cpc.pdf
Comment added June 11, 2025 11:37am
Dont Defund housing

“A crucial fact almost always missing from the “freeze the rent” conversation is that rent-stabilized rents, adjusted for inflation, have been going down for years.

How many years? The answer might surprise you: 10.

The last time an RGB increase outpaced inflation was at the beginning of the de Blasio administration, before the new mayor filled the board with his own appointees (who froze rents three times). The streak has continued under Mayor Eric Adams.

A chart posted on X by newly appointed Rent Guidelines Board member Alex Armlovich, a senior housing analyst at the Niskanen Center, tracks the diﬀerence between the Consumer Price Index and the increases allowed by the Rent Guidelines Board back to October 2000. The fifth column shows the RGB increase minus the CPI for that period.”
Comment attachment
Rents-Have-Been-Falling-for-10-Years.pdf
Comment added June 13, 2025 3:54am
Joe

Sub-inflation increases from the RGB are hurting the NYC budget. The Real Deal is reporting that Clipper Equity just dumped an Upper West Side rent stabilized building at a 42% discount bringing it back to 2008 values. These distressed sales at depressed rates will only serve to reduce the property tax roll for the city. Given property tax is the single largest revenue source for NYC – accounting for 44% of all New York City tax revenue – this is a big deal. Stop devaluing NY. Start seeing reasonable rate increases that cover costs.
Comment attachment
rbg-destorying-nyc.pdf
Comment added June 13, 2025 5:15pm

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