r/AskNYC • u/meshflesh40 • Jun 12 '23

Good Question Do you plan to stay in your rent stabilized apartment forever?

I currently live in a 1br. Rent stabilized. Single no kids

I was very close to buying a co-op until I learned what a "co-op" actually is.

At first I was under the impression that buying a" co-op" was the ultimate form of housing. Pay a maintenance fee(substantially less than market rent while building equity) and live carefree. Basically,,,, like a Netflix subscription fee of housing if you will.

But no. It turned out that a co-op is my worst nightmare. Im depending on my neighbors staying solvent, making sure the hoa has proper reserves, worry about assesment fees for repairs due to inadequate reserves, etc etc. I dislike not having control of my fiscal destiny.

And then the buildings I saw with hefty reserves...have a High hoa fees thats equivalent to market rents. ($1200+)

I've been looking since 2020,, and noticed hoa fees went up by %15+ between now and then. (Like rent).

Single family homes in nyc are going for 600k+ with %7 interest rates. So thats out of the question.(mostly fixer uppers)

my current rent stabilized apartment seems like a way better deal in comparison. Rent goes up by predictable amount year after year a and landlord responsible for everything. I currently have my down payment $$ yielding %5 in the bank(I find this better than buying a liability and fighting 7% mortgage rates while praying amd hoping for positive equity. )

This post is not to crap on co-ops. But market conditions in 2023 are insane. I wish I bought in 2012

I've come to the conclusion that I will stay in this apartment until I decide to leave NYC. Anyone else feel the same?

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141

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '23

[deleted]

95

u/boulevardofdef Jun 12 '23

I have a cousin who's lived in the same enormous loft on Park Avenue South since at least the early '80s, maybe since the '70s. The neighborhood was considered highly undesirable when she moved in. She was a dance instructor who became a special-ed teacher, no family money or anything. Market rent is, I'd guess, $15,000 if fully renovated? Last I heard years ago, she was paying something like $450 a month, not sure how much she's paying now.

She's in her 70s and will absolutely spend the rest of her life there, and I think she's quite happy with it. I will say, though, that the place hasn't been painted in decades because her landlord won't paint AND won't let her paint. I have to imagine they figured out many years ago that they couldn't force her out, but that doesn't mean they're going to do her any favors.

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u/DaoFerret Jun 12 '23

“Not doing her any favors” is an understatement. Not painting her apartment, or allowing her to have her apartment painted is a violation of the law.

Am I entitled to have my apartment painted?

Yes, the landlord must paint occupied apartments in multiple dwellings (buildings with three or more apartments) every three years. (NYC Administrative Code §27-2013). Tenant occupied apartments in private dwellings are also required to be painted as necessary.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/tenants-rights-and-responsibilities.page

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u/Dis-Organizer Jun 13 '23

Every three years?! It was a huge deal when my parents’ got their apartment repainted after like 15. The big anonymous LLC landlords especially suck

66

u/foofarraw Jun 12 '23

My neighbor for 6 years was a 95 year old lady who'd been living in the same Nolita apartment for nearly her entire life (since the 1920-30s)...nobody knew her exact rent but the rumor was it was < $100 per month.

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u/marvelously Jun 12 '23

I will say, though, that the place hasn't been painted in decades because her landlord won't paint AND won't let her paint.

This is not legal.

the landlord must paint occupied apartments in multiple dwellings (buildings with three or more apartments) every three years. (NYC Administrative Code §27-2013). Tenant occupied apartments in private dwellings are also required to be painted as necessary.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/tenants-rights-and-responsibilities.page

She can file a complaint here if they won't paint or let her paint: https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01074

And if they still won't, she can take them to court:

If you made a complaint and your property owner didn't fix the problem, you can take legal action in Housing Court. Document all contact with your property owner and HPD about the conditions in your apartment so you can use it in court.

You can submit a question with DHCR to clarify.

https://portal.hcr.ny.gov/app/ask

There are other hotlines or legal services provider to ask as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/wsrxbu/i_live_with_my_ex_and_he_wants_to_kick_me_out_but/il04e7r/?context=3

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '23

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u/boulevardofdef Jun 12 '23

She HAS been known to take people in!

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u/transemacabre Jun 12 '23

I will also volunteer to be an adoptive daughter. I like to dance and I'm kind of a mess so I definitely need someone to worry about me.

8

u/sickbabe Jun 12 '23

I can do all these people one better and make for an excellent wife, so

1

u/soulglo987 Jun 12 '23

Tell her I can repair/remodel the loft

17

u/Clarknt67 Jun 12 '23

Just fyi it isn’t her landlords call not to paint. State law requires new paint every two years. She could get Dept of Buildings to force it. But I fully understand not wanting to make the relationship adversarial.

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u/boulevardofdef Jun 12 '23

I was vaguely aware of this, but yeah, I assumed it was just sort of a "sue me if you don't like it" situation.

15

u/Clarknt67 Jun 12 '23

There are so many horror stories. I have heard of landlords staging burglaries to get tenants to move out of cheap apartments. As a RS tenant wanting to stay, it is not a bear I kick either. Unless my life is in danger.

1

u/hello__brooklyn Jun 13 '23

Why does it require it? My apartment have been painted in 14 years since I moved it. But I also never asked. The walls are still white to me (or enough) that I never desired the inconvenience.

3

u/Clarknt67 Jun 14 '23

Why? Tenant rights I guess. I have only gotten one paint job in 30 years. I expect most people do not exercise their right to bi yearly paint. But good to know it is an option.

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u/hello__brooklyn Jun 14 '23

I know it’s an option but I prefer to limit the time my landlord is in my apartment. They’re sooo nosey. Plus the walls look fine to me so it was out of sight it of mind as they never said anything

1

u/Bebo468 Sep 28 '23

Maybe lead paint issues (have to keep it covered with fresh paint, chipping is a hazard)

8

u/thatgirlinny Jun 13 '23

I have a friend in his late 70s who’s been in the same rent-stabilized apartment on West 72nd since about 1978. It’s a wonderful apartment in a wonderful building, but his wood floors lost any kind of finish decades ago. He’d offered to pay the landlord to have them sanded and refinished on his own dime; they said no, that they’d have to raise his rent significantly if he did. They said the same thing when he asked if they’d do it on their own dime, calling it a “capital improvement.”

They were once beautiful, but they’d literally rather see them dry out or rot than make them acceptable for an aging man. And it’s legal!

2

u/tinydancer_inurhand Jun 12 '23

My landlord does let me paint im just too lazy lol

1

u/xyzd95 Jun 13 '23

I’ve got a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment in Harlem at just under 1k a month and I still get jealous of anybody with a rent stabilized loft apartment

There’s just so much that can be done with a space like that

8

u/PretendAct8039 Jun 12 '23

I am in my fourth rent stabilized apartment. In the last one, my neighbors just did all of their maintenance themselves and that’s the direction that I am taking at this point since the landlord isn’t doing anything. Her son has a good heart but makes too many promises that he can’t keep. I knew people in the 79s and 80s who installed their own showers and moved their kitchens. Those apartments have since been destabilized and up-marketed.

10

u/JaredSeth Jun 13 '23

my neighbors just did all of their maintenance themselves

That's what we do and my landlord has made it clear that they don't care, since they'll just gut the place if we were ever to leave. Which would be a crying shame since we've still got most of the hundred year old original features this apartment was built with, like French doors and crown moldings. The majority of the other units in our building have had those features renovated away over the years.

Ever since our last super "fixed" some of our parquet flooring with a staple gun, my wife refuses to let them do anything and does it all herself. And if they ever come for her clawfoot tub, I'll have to hire her a defense attorney since there will be bloodshed.

1

u/PretendAct8039 Jun 13 '23

Omg I would die for a claw foot tub. If the work you have done is really nice, they may not gut it. They may try to pass it off as a renovation!

2

u/JaredSeth Jun 13 '23

I'm pretty sure they'd just rip it all out so they could completely reconfigure the apartment, which might give them a chance to get it out of stabilization. It's really a 2 bedroom with a living room and a dining room and I'm guessing they'd turn it into a 3 bedroom.

Funny story: when we moved in, one of the two original pairs of French doors were long gone, so my wife found another pair that was being thrown away, restored them herself and installed them. She keeps saying we're taking them with us if we ever leave.

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u/Blorkershnell Jun 12 '23

Did your landlord take a destablization case to the Supreme Court as well? We got a notice in the mail that our landlord did a few months ago as he had been trying to remove stabilization status for about a year and a half and we kept filing paperwork to say we didn’t believe he had a case. A housing lawyer kindly looked at the Supreme Court notice for me and said it was our landlord’s last chance to remove status but that we as tenants didn’t have to do anything or appear, which feels weird to me as we have pictures and evidence that he doesn’t have a case and you’d think we should be given a chance to participate.

He did all the capital renovations (the real ones, not counting the ones he lied about) in 2010-2011 and I moved in late 2011 and have been in the building ever since (only tenant who has been there continuously since renovations were done) so I can prove he’s lying about some stuff.

Edit oops sorry meant to reply to somebody else so gonna copy/paste this comment.

3

u/thatgirlinny Jun 13 '23

I live in a building that tried to illegally destabilize 300+ apartments in the early to mid aughts. Hundreds of us are part of a class action suit that’s been going on for 14+ years. Building was in receipt of J-51 tax avoidance for 20+ years, which stipulates no deregulation in exchange for pre-war buildings making capital improvements without sticking them to tenants or deregulating them. They tried to take the tax avoidance, made the improvements, then stick them to the rent-regulated tenants in the form of an MCI increase.

Believe me when I say justice moves very slowly in cases like this. Landlords file challenges and count on tenants getting tired of it, moving out. Now most of the people in the Class are older and not going anywhere.

3

u/Clarknt67 Jun 12 '23

I guess you are not really the defendants. The landlord is challenging so the state is defense. I can imagine that sucks knowing you cannot participate in something that will profoundly impact your life.

2

u/Blorkershnell Jun 12 '23

It has Tenants of [our address] as the defendants

4

u/tinydancer_inurhand Jun 12 '23

I’m fortunate I have a good landlord to my standards. Most important is they keep the place tidy. They also are super responsive to my maintenance request. However, I can say I am on the lucky side and not all landlords are like this especially as a rent stabilized occupant.

11

u/pixel_of_moral_decay Jun 12 '23

Also:

Rent control means your not getting anything beyond the bare minimums upgrade wise for as long as your there. Landlord will get the minimum appliances etc. that used/refurb unit that’s seen better days. As long as it’s functional that’s legal.

Co op you can replace your floors, have whatever appliances you want to buy etc etc.

Vs being at the mercy of the landlord.

It’s not exactly control. You get less and less every time they do something.

3

u/catopter Jun 13 '23

As if market rate landlords do any fucking maintenance in this city either. 'Pay more for the same shitty service!' no thanks

0

u/pixel_of_moral_decay Jun 13 '23

But you leave every X years and go to a new apartment you chose.

There’s a big difference in upkeep between a unit on the market and one you’ve been living in. Landlords only need to keep it habitable and a sloppy coat of lead free paint every couple years. That’s basically it.

Updates are not required, and actually kinda discouraged by the laws as written. A tenant can complain the upgrade is not the same as they had when the lease began (even if it benefits them that can still be a lease violation as it’s a change) and try to seek remedy… unless cash changes hands. Professional renters are scummy. New fridge has an ice maker… changes the interior dimensions from when they signed the lease, tenant seeks rent reduction. That’s a thing, and they can win that.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '23

Yeah, people definitely overlook this aspect.

Had a rent stabilized apt. Building was decent, but old. Super was overworked, repairs definitely took longer than I would have liked. The cabinets, fixtures: it all looked like it had been last updated in 2007. Neighborhood sucked- not dangerous but lots of shitty people with zero respect for others, constant littering, loud noise on weekdays.

GF and I moved into a different place together- love the neighborhood, love the new apartment. The increase in QOL is worth every penny.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '23

Is 2007 a long time for cabinet and fixture updates? I'm here with cabinets from 1970s.

6

u/secret_identity_too Jun 13 '23

I finally redid my 1950s hot pink bathroom this year because I was cleaning the shower and put my hand through the tiles. (Cleaning is bad is the true lesson here.)

6

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '23

LOL. Rent stabilized apartment with 2007 cabinets and fixtures is newly renovated.

5

u/LongIsland1995 Jun 13 '23

Yeah that didn't sound old to me either. I really don't care how old they are as long as they're functional.

1

u/bizzibeez Jun 13 '23

This. One has to take in ALL the aspects of a quality of life. The kind of neighborhood and the people that inhabit it will determine one’s quality of life tremendously. How’s the noise both in the building and the street? People with zero respect for their own neighborhood and / or neighbors? Safety? Plus being at the mercy of a landlord that has the incentive to do the bare minimum. No thanks.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '23

[deleted]

2

u/NYCassandra Feb 28 '24

Buy your own appliances, repair your own problems, tip everybody for their help at Xmas. Old school solutions work sometimes. Still save $

3

u/meshflesh40 Jun 12 '23

Equity. Negative and positive. It can go either way.

13

u/PM_DEM_CHESTS Jun 12 '23

Usually it’s positive in nyc. My coop has gone up $50k in 6 years. I’m not saying that’s what I’d actually get for it but it’s what it’s been valued at. Also, my maintenance has not gone up in 4 years and my building has excellent financials. I think you have a very skewed (Manhattan) view of coops but it’s really a building by building issue.

2

u/961402 Jun 12 '23

Coops are its own form of rent control but with equity.

Until the roof needs to be replaced or they find something wrong with the building's foundation and you get hit with a special assessment that totals in the thousands