Six months after progressive New York legislators rammed through radical new rent laws, sales of apartment buildings are plummeting.
The total dollar value of building sales citywide fell 40 percent in 2019 to $6.91 billion, the lowest total since 2011, reports brokerage Ariel Property Advisors. The price for rent-stabilized buildings fell 7 percent.
Blame state lawmakers’ move to severely limit landlords’ ability to raise rents to cover the costs of unit renovations and building improvements.
“The fact that there’s no correlation between the amount you put into a building and the amount of rent you can charge has completely shifted investment interest in rent-stabilized buildings,” Shimon Shkury, Ariel’s president, told Bloomberg News.
This guarantees owners will put less money into buildings — which means fewer upgrades and units going off the market.
Thank the Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo for making the city’s housing crisis even worse.