Rent Stabilized Apartments

What is a rent stabilized apartment?

The laws concerning rent stabilization and rent controlled apartments can be quite complicated. To simplify the important information as much as possible, we believe you need to know the following:

There are three qualifications

1. Apartments in buildings of six or more units built between February 1, 1947 and January 1, 1974.

2. Tenants in buildings of six or more units built before February 1, 1947 and who moved in after June 30, 1971

3. Buildings with three or more apartments constructed or extensively renovated since 1974 with special tax benefits.

If an apartment is rent stabilized, the rent can only be increased between three and five percent per year (depending on the year), unless one of the following occurs:

For the owner to increase the rent of the apartment:

- The apartment is renovated. If the apartment is renovated, 1/40th of the total cost of renovation can be added to the apartment's monthly rent.

(If the rent for an apartment is $1,000 and an owner spends $8,000 renovating the apartment, the owner can add $8,000/40 = $200 to the rent for a new total rent of $1,200.)

- If there is an MCI (major capitol improvement) to the building, the cost of this improvement can be added to the rent of every apartment located in the building.

(The formula for calculating the exact increase is quite complicated, but a basic example is as follows: the owner replaces the roof of a building with 100 apartments at a cost of $20,000. The owner can then increase the rent of each apartment by $20,000/100(apartments) = $200 (per apartment)/12(months) = $16.66 per month rent increase to each apartment in the building. Again, this is a very simplified version of the actual formula.)