Mamdanis rent freeze makes owning stabilized buildings clearly unsustainable for NYC landlords

Rent-stabilized landlords face a harsh reality: rising costs and capped revenues.On Thursday night, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board made good on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to “freeze the rent” on one- and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units to the chagrin of some landlords.“Expense items are not proportional to the income the properties generate,” said landlord Lav Bauta, whose firm Zion Equities owns about 800 New York City rent-stabilized units and manages 4,000 apartments.“Rent-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.”The median collected rent in a property that is over 90% rent-stabilized in 2025 was $1,395 per month, according to NYU Furman Center, which Bauta said is “roughly equal to the monthly operating cost of such a unit.” At Zion’s 4242 Ithaca St.in Elmhurst, Queens, two units were rented below that figure.“You 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,” Bauta added.The RGB’s decision came hours after the public resignation of one of the RGB’s nine members, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its own data during the lengthy process to decide whether to adjust rents.According to the RGB’s own research, 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’s Index, went up 2.6%.The greatest increases, however, were in fuel, surging 11% — followed by insurance, climbing 10.5%.James Whelan, president of the re...