Rent Guidelines board votes to freeze rents for 1-year leases

Board voted for 2% increase on two-year leases

The city’s Rent Guidelines board voted Monday evening to extend the rent freeze on one-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments, in a repeat of last year’s vote. The board also called for a 2 percent increase for two-year leases.

Real estate investors have argued that a rent freeze puts a damper on the city’s multifamily investment sales market, as there over 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in the city — nearly half of the city’s rental stock.

“Another abhorrent illustration of de Blasio’s politics dictating housing policy,” Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, told the Wall Street Journal.

Tenant advocates, however, were pushing the board to consider rolling back rents, saying that property owners’ expenses have gone down.

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The Rent Guidelines Board’s chairperson, Kathleen Roberts, told the newspaper that the vote reflected lower operating costs for rental landlords over the past year, driven by a drop in heating-fuel prices. [WSJ] Hiten Samtani