New Yorkers have rent stabilization on the brain.
It’s dominated headlines since the race for the city’s next mayor kicked off last year, and Zohran Mamdani cemented freezing rents at these properties as a core tenet of his campaign ahead of his shock upset to clinch the Democratic primary.
More New Yorkers are starting to wrap their heads around stabilization — a concept many outsiders long confused with ever-elusive rent-controlled units, a la Monica Geller’s massive Greenwich Village apartment in “Friends” — and more are on the hunt to secure their own piece of the pie.
Data from OpenIgloo found that the share of users filtering for rent-stabilized apartment listings increased from just 10 percent in the summer months of 2024 to 35 percent the same time this year.
The platform recently launched its own map of rent-stabilized properties, which it claims is the first of its kind to track rent-regulated housing stock. Others are also jumping in on the action, including a startup called Realer Estate, which uses an algorithm to identify apartments that are likely rent-stabilized.
For lifelong or well-seasoned New Yorkers, the conversation about rent stabilization and its prevalence across the five boroughs is likely nothing new. Finding and keeping affordable apartments in a city that only continues to get more expensive (a bacon, egg and cheese in Manhattan can now run $11.50, according to one Reddit user) is a quest many are all too familiar with.
The renewed conversation about rent-stabilization arising from the mayoral race is likely catching a fresh crop of New Yorkers (potentially transplants from other cities) up to the idea, especially as market-rate rents continue to rise.
Rent-burdened residents on the lookout for their own sweet deal might look to The Real Deal’s coverage and see finding the rent-regulated apartment is only half the battle — what condition it will be in over your years of living in it is another, as rent-stabilized owners are grappling with rising costs and falling income, making it difficult to keep up with necessary improvements.
Not so fast…
Though Manhattan’s trophy market is tumbling, luxury business in the suburbs is on the up-and-up.
Earlier this week, hotelier Ian Schrager, known as the co-founder of Studio 54, listed his 12-acre estate in Westchester County for $7.5 million, up from its $5 million purchase price more than a decade ago.
Schrager is seeking to offload the property on the tails of a hot streak in the tri-state area, which logged a three-year record deal in New Jersey, a top-dollar trade in the Hamptons and a boom in trophy sales in Greenwich, Connecticut.
In the wealthy enclave of Alpine, a Versailles-inspired mansion sold last week for nearly $18 million, marking the priciest deal in New Jersey since 2022. The deal for the seven-bedroom home grabbed headlines even though it fell short of its initial asking price of $25 million when it hit the market four years ago.
In East Hampton, video game developer Matthew Karch dropped $32 million on an oceanfront home on Lily Pond Lane. The deal marked the first for the property since the sellers, Norman and Helene Stark, bought it for $5 million in 1994. The Starks originally sought $75 million for the two-acre estate in 2017, though they later cut the asking price to $39 million.
Meanwhile, Greenwich’s luxury market logged 25 deals exceeding $10 million since the start of the year, the most recorded since 1999. With so many sales already on the books this year, some anticipate the affluent Connecticut town could double its total from last year by the end of 2025.
However, Manhattan’s luxury market is charting a different course. Last week, the borough saw just 11 homes asking $4 million or more enter contract with zero of the properties asking more than $10 million. The slump came after four weeks of declining totals, though the Labor Day holiday likely contributed to the drop off.
NYC Deal of the Week
The priciest deal to land in city records this week was for a co-op on the Upper East Side, which traded for $18 million. Investor Steven Wisch and his wife, filmmaker Debra Wisch, sold Unit 10 at 1125 Fifth Avenue, where actress Bette Midler and Disney’s Bob Iger once owned apartments, to a trust tied to a Westport, Connecticut, address.
The full-floor co-op spans roughly 4,600 square feet and has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Douglas Elliman’s Sabrina Saltiel had the listing.
Read more
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Landlord does the math on his vacant apartment
