How Mamdani’s Rent Guidelines Board is cooking the – Latest News
The metropolis’s Rent Guidelines Board gained’t resolve this yr’s rent hikes for regulated residences till June, however its employees is already cooking the stats to “justify” Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promised rent freeze.
The board’s lately launched 2026 Income and Expense research claims landlords’ Net Operating Income for buildings with rent-stabilized items rose 6.2%. Tenants’ advocates say that justifies a rent freeze.
Don’t buy it: That 6.2% determine tells you a lot much less than you consider landlords’ skill to pay their payments.
For starters, adjusted for inflation, the quantity drops to only 2.2%.
And it’s merely a year-over-year comparability of building homeowners’ income after subtracting bills like taxes, utilities, upkeep, insurance coverage, and so on.
More From Post Editorial Board
So if an proprietor loses money one yr, however sees his income rise a bit, enabling him to lose much less the subsequent yr, that would show up as “increase” — though he’s nonetheless shedding money.
What’s more, it’s an combination determine for all buildings with no less than one rent-stabilized unit, though some have market-rate items whose rent hikes pump up the average, distorting the image.
For buildings with more than 50% of their items rent-stabilized, the “increase” in Net Operating Income was simply 4%; for these with 100% stabilized items, it was simply 2.4%.
Nor does the determine distinguish between new buildings and previous ones that need main repairs.
That’s key, since the NOI doesn’t account for the value of capital enhancements or debt service.
The citywide NOI additionally conflates buildings in “core Manhattan,” the place inflation-adjusted growth was 10%, with the total relaxation of the metropolis, the place it was simply 0.9%.
In The Bronx, internet income truly fell — by 0.1%.
Here’s the actual story: Numerous residential buildings in the metropolis have been shedding money, thanks largely to rent freezes or too-small will increase, averaging much less than 1%, beneath Mayor Bill de Blasio and inadequate hikes to make up for it beneath Mayor Eric Adams.
In specific, rent-stabilized buildings constructed earlier than 1974 are in shabby form and need main, expensive repairs and upgrades.
On prime of that, the metropolis’s climate law, Local Law 97, requires expensive adjustments to satisfy emissions requirements.
Meanwhile, genius progressives in Albany made it unattainable for landlords to cross on the prices of these upgrades to tenants.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our each day Post Opinion publication!
Thanks for signing up!
Tens of hundreds of “zombie” residences at the moment are being warehoused as a result of landlords can’t afford to carry them up to code and recoup their outlays through rent.
No matter: The Rent Guidelines Board — six of whose 9 members have been appointed by Mamdani — doesn’t truly care about the information.
Expect it to do socialist Mamdani’s bidding and ram via a rent freeze.
Also when it does, anticipate more residences to degrade, buildings to go belly-up and tenants to undergo.
