Prices for New York City’s rent-stabilized landlords have outpaced general inflation, according to the Rent Guidelines Board.
The price of a basket of goods for rent-stabilized landlords rose 5.3 percent in the last year, more than the 2.7 percent inflation economists say the country experienced, not including housing costs. In the past five years, prices for those landlords have risen 31 percent, according to the board’s most recent report. Energy and insurance saw the highest inflation.
Rents for stabilized units would need to increase by an estimated 3.4 to 4.5 percent to keep owners’ net operating income unchanged.
The numbers are ammunition for landlords who are advocating for a rent increase on stabilized units, but that effort continues to be an uphill battle. A majority of members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets allowable rent increases on New York’s nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, were appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran on freezing those rents.
“I don’t think this is appropriate for us to be giving a ton of weight to in our decision-making,” Adán Soltren, a tenant member appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, said of the findings at the board’s Thursday meeting. “We should take a lot of this with a grain of salt.”
Soltren argued that the data, collected as part of the board’s Price Index of Operating Costs report, is a flawed measure.
The report measures inflation in the things landlords buy, not how much they actually spent in the given period. In an inflationary environment, landlords can pull back their demand in some categories, like labor.
“Nowhere in the law does it say we need to have a formula to keep NOI constant each year,” Soltren said.
Landlord advocates said rents should keep up with expense growth.
“The costs of operating and maintaining the city’s aging affordable housing stock continue to far outpace rental income,” Ann Korchak, board president of the Small Property Owners of New York, said in a statement.
But tenant advocates were unmoved by landlords’ concerns over costs.
“Landlord profits are up after years of rent increases, but they are still demanding more,” Sumathy Kumar, director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, said in a statement.
Coming in for a landing
Insurance and fuel prices grew the most, at 10.5 percent and 11 percent year-over-year, respectively. Insurance price growth slowed, from 18 percent in the board’s last report.
Because of how the board collects data, it’s difficult to compare the numbers with the board’s latest report on landlords’ net operating income. The board reported a 6.2 percent growth citywide in average net operating income for rent-stabilized landlords, before adjusting for inflation. But those numbers are from 2024, and are subject to a two-year delay.
Toward the end of his campaign, Mamdani began to pair his call for a rent freeze with a discussion of ways the city could alleviate costs for landlords in distress.
But some landlords feel the mayor has backed off that strategy since taking office.
“There has been no proposal to cut costs. He hasn’t called for billions of dollars in investment to save this housing,” Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, which represents rent-stabilized property owners, said in a statement. “This shouldn’t be about politics, it should be about math.”
Distress has been growing in affordable housing projects, according to data presented by Robert Riggs, from lender Community Preservation Corp. More than 30 percent of loans in CPC’s 14,000-unit affordable housing portfolio don’t have the net operating income to pay their debt service.
Rent collections have also fallen among affordable properties. Building owners are taking in an average of about 92 percent of the rent they’re charging, down from more than 95 percent before the pandemic, Riggs said.
“Policy makers should support a soft landing,” said Riggs, adding that owners and lenders can absorb some losses, but a soft landing would mean stable values, stable ownership, low risk and low returns. “You need to have stable NOI for any of those things to come to fruition.”
Who’s buying?
In addition to price growth, the board also gave insight into the sale of buildings with at least some rent-stabilized units. About 730 of those buildings were sold in 2025, according to the board, an increase of 33 percent from 2024.
Brokers have said small-time landlords who have been in the rent-stabilized space for decades continue to buy the buildings at a low basis.
“There’s been a flight of institutional capital,” Riggs said.
Although the majority of buildings sold in 2025 were in Manhattan, the Bronx saw the biggest percentage increase in sales. A total of 138 rent-stabilized Bronx buildings were sold, an increase of 106 percent.
The citywide number of buildings sold increased year over year, but still pales in comparison to the metric’s peak in 2005, when about 1,800 rent-stabilized buildings were sold.
The per-unit price of older buildings with rent-stabilized units fell 5.8 percent in 2025. The average sale price of a building with rent-stabilized units built before 1974 was $228,437 per unit, according to data from the board. That price was lower for buildings that were made up of more than half rent-stabilized units.
Riggs ended his testimony by underscoring the challenge faced by the Rent Guidelines Board, whose decisions affect owners operating very different buildings. His concern is for the most distressed buildings: fully stabilized properties in the Bronx with extremely low rents.
“The end result is financial distress increases, housing quality decreases, all driven by growing expenses, weak collections and suppressed revenue growth,” Riggs said. “Once you’re on that trajectory, it gets harder and harder to get off of it.”
Read more
Who’s still buying rent-stabilized buildings?
Can’t pay, won’t pay: NYC’s affordable operators get squeezed by slow collections
Rent Guidelines Board says buildings’ net income climbed by 6%
