Despite widespread complaints about sky-high rents, a review by the Independent Budget Office Thursday found 175,000 rent-regulated apartments in the city where landlords are actually charging less than what they could legally.
The city’s budget watchdog surveyed 765,354 apartments subject to rent regulation and found 23 percent where the maximum allowable rent was too high for the market.
Neighborhoods with the highest percentage of discounted rent-regulated units included Oakwood, Staten Island (62 percent), and Fresh Meadows, Queens (61 percent) — although there were relatively few regulated units in both neighborhoods.
Even Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side in Manhattan had 10 percent of rent-regulated units at marked-down prices.
Officials said the findings counter the notion that rent regulation always limits the amount that owners can charge their tenants.
“The fact that in some parts of the city more than a quarter of units receive preferential rents indicates that rent regulation is not always the most important factor in determining a tenant’s rent,” the report said.
“Barring substantial increases in market rents in the neighborhoods with large shares of regulated units with preferential rates, continued regulation might not make much difference.”