While Governor Andrew Cuomo lobbies for rent-regulation, New York City landlords claim that they cannot sustain their businesses without rent increases for stabilized apartments, according to Crain’s. Operating costs for buildings that are entirely or partially rent-regulated– almost half the residential buildings in the city — jumped 6.1 percent in the year ending March 31, according to New York City Rent Guidelines Board’s annual price index, 2.7 percent more of an increase than in the previous year.

“A lot of owners can’t make their expenses,” said Roberta Bernstein, president of non-profit organization Small Property Owners of New York. “We keep on getting strangled.”

Owners say they are facing a dramatic rise in taxes in addition to hikes in the cost of fuel and utilities. Fuel has risen 23 percent in the last year, according to the index, real estate taxes rose 3.5 percent and property taxes ate from 7 to 30 percent of landlords’ income. [more]

Following Governor Andrew Cuomo’s loud and proud declaration of support for rent-regulation, the Rent Stabilization Association has launched a new series of commercials explaining how the regulations only benefit Manhattan’s rich. The advertisements are now airing on local radio stations, according to the New York Observer.

One woman, featured in the commercials, says she rents out six affordable housing units in Crown Heights. “Vacancy and luxury control?” she says, “Not an issue in my neighborhood. Who is Albany really protecting? Nobody in Brooklyn. Just wealthy Manhattan renters.” [more]

In a recently released video, Governor Andrew Cuomo says it would be “a crisis of our state” if the state legislature fails to extend rent laws beyond their scheduled June 15 expiration date (see video above).

He states his unwavering support for the extension and strengthening of rent regulation rules which limit what landlords can charge in over 1 million New York City and suburbs apartments.

In March, Cuomo abandoned a plan to include the extension as well as a limit on local property taxes in the state buget in the face of Republican opposition.

Last month, the State Assembly approved an extension but the issue has gone relatively unnoticed in the Senate. [NYT] [more]

There’s something fishy about the Republican push to end the city’s rent regulations, at least according to some Democrats, and they’re going to get to the bottom of it. The Daily News reported that the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenant advocate group, submitted a Freedom of Information Law request for all communications between landlord groups and leaders in the Republican-controlled state Senate. Austin Shafran, an aide to Senate Democrats, said the “affordable housing massacre” being staged by the GOP “needs to be exposed.” But a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos of Nassau County countered that the party “make[s] the decision to support or oppose legislation based on the merits, plain and simple.” [NYDN]

The city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized tenants are likely to see their largest rent hikes since 2008 when their leases are up, according to the Post. A study by the Rent Guidelines Board, which is scheduled to make a preliminary vote on this year’s rent increases this coming Tuesday, found that landlords’ operating costs rose 6.1 percent over the last 12 months thanks largely to the rising cost of heating fuel. Last year, when the board agreed to raise rents by a modest 2.25 percent for one-year lease renewals and 4.5 percent for two-year renewals, the numbers were based on a 3.4 percent uptick in landlord expenses. Based on the board’s latest study, rents for one-year leases will need to be raised by 3.25 percent and two-year leases by 6.5 percent. [more]

The State Assembly has passed a bill to extend and bolster the city’s rent regulation laws through 2016, Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office announced yesterday evening. The bill would repeal vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to deregulate apartments when they become vacant or when the rent tips above $2,000 monthly. It would also raise the thresholds at which landlords can deregulate apartments based on tenants’ income. Landlords can currently begin charging market-rate rents when a tenant makes more than $175,000 per year and pays at least $2,000 in monthly rent; under the new rules, those limits would be increased to $300,000 and $3,000. TRD [more]

Over the weekend in Albany, legislators and Governor Andrew Cuomo hammered out a budget deal, but they have yet to resolve the complex issue of extending the state law covering apartment rent regulations which sunset in June.

Commercial sales broker Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, and Maggie Russell-Ciardi, executive director of the advocacy group New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition, spar over rent regulation issues in this week’s Insights from The Real Deal (see video above).

They debate the idea floated by Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, of raising the $2,000 threshold for decontrolling apartments, as well as the New York State Court of Appeals ruling concerning the tax abatement known as J-51. The decision determined that some landlords had improperly raised rents on their tenants while receiving the financial incentive.

The current law laying out state rent regulations was last extended in 2003 and is set to expire June 15. Although lawmakers are expected to pass some version of the measure, elected officials are debating which provisions to include.
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The Real Estate Board of New York is warming to the idea of an increase in the city’s $2,000 rent deregulation limit after years of opposing rent regulations altogether, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are prepared to look at a higher number,” Steven Spinola, REBNY’s president, told the Journal. “It depends what the rest of the package is.” The stance represents a major shift for the real estate industry’s leading trade association, which has long been fighting off efforts by advocacy groups to limit landlords’ ability to charge market-rate rents in vacant rent-regulated apartments once their rents reached the a certain rent threshold. Comments

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to extend state rent laws that include rent-stabilization provisions on more than one million units across the city, according to the Wall Street Journal. The current law doesn’t expire until June 15, but he hopes to secure an extension with the April 1 state budget submission. Extending rent rules is typically a hot button issue in the state legislature and for landlords and tenants across the city. Republican pressure helped relax the rent-stabilization laws in recent years, and more than 300,000 units have been deregulated since 1993. [more]

With New York’s rent-regulation laws set to expire June 15, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has released a new report that supports their extension. Entitled, “The New Housing Emergency,” the report (in full after the jump) says loopholes in the city’s current rent-stabilization rules — like vacancy decontrol and rent increases due to renovations — result in the loss of more than 10,000 rent-regulated apartments per year. The median income for tenants of the 1.02 million rent-regulated apartments in New York City is $38,000, according to the report. TRD  [more]