Housing & Real Estate Active Updated Oct 2, 2026
The rent freeze
Mamdani campaigned on a guarantee to freeze rents for the city's roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, home to about 2.4 million tenants, after four straight years of increases under Adams totaling about 12% on one-year leases. The Rent Guidelines Board he appointed delivered the first freeze covering both one- and two-year leases in the board's history on June 25, 2026. Landlord groups say the vote ignored the board's own cost data and are weighing lawsuits, though none had been filed as of early July 2026.
The story so far
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Oct 1, 2026 Latest
The Rent Guidelines Board's freeze on renewal leases for roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments took effect Oct. 1, with Manhattan Judge Brendan Lantry declining to halt it while the landlords' case proceeds. Landlord attorney Randy Mastro filed emails and texts the court ordered City Hall to hand over, and the Times reported they show mostly logistics and no instruction to freeze. The mayor's spokesperson said the board chair and mayor's liaison exchanged 101 emails this cycle versus 228 under Adams, and Mastro asked to depose top officials.
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Sep 30, 2026
Gothamist reported that former Rent Guidelines Board chair Doug Apple said Randy Mastro, the lawyer now suing to void the freeze, lobbied him for a low increase in 2025. Mastro confirmed the calls and said relaying a mayor's disagreement differs from orchestrating an outcome. The freeze on new one- and two-year stabilized leases was set to take effect Oct. 1, while Hell Gate reported landlords think a search of Mamdani's texts could overturn it.
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Sep 25, 2026
The city told Judge Brendan Lantry that a search of Mayor Mamdani's emails turned up no messages with Rent Guidelines Board staff or members, as the judge ordered 26 officials to hand over screenshots of their texts and emails with the board by Tuesday, Sept. 29, Brownstoner and The Real Deal reported.
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Sep 24, 2026
A Manhattan judge kept Mayor Mamdani's rent freeze for roughly 1 million stabilized apartments on track to take effect Oct. 1, ruling he lacks authority to halt it, and ordered 26 city officials, including Mamdani, to turn over their phone messages and emails in the landlords' lawsuit, Gothamist reported.
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Sep 17, 2026
Manhattan Justice Brendan Lantry authorized landlords suing to void the rent freeze to obtain City Hall's written communications with the Rent Guidelines Board from Jan. 1 through the June 25 vote, excluding messages within City Hall and within the board, and did not rule on blocking the freeze. Board dissenter Gupta said a day after the vote that they saw no administration interference in members' decisions.
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Sep 4, 2026
Judge Brendan Lantry heard nearly six hours of arguments Wednesday from landlords seeking to void the Rent Guidelines Board's freeze on nearly a million rent-stabilized apartments, with attorney Randy Mastro arguing the board's outcome was decided before hearings began and the board's lawyer Steven Banks defending its cost and rent-burden research. Lantry allowed tenant groups to intervene and reserved decision without ruling, 27 days before the freeze takes effect.
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Aug 14, 2026
Tenant groups moved to intervene in Staten Island court to defend Mayor Mamdani's rent freeze against the landlord lawsuit seeking to void it, Gothamist reported.
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Jul 23, 2026
Seven landlord LLCs sued in Staten Island court to void the Rent Guidelines Board's June 25 rent freeze on roughly 1 million stabilized apartments, arguing Mamdani's appointees manipulated cost data. Justice Porzio set a Sept. 2 hearing and ordered City Hall to turn over its records of communications with the board. Randy Mastro, Eric Adams' former deputy mayor, represents the landlords.
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Jul 20, 2026
Comptroller Mark Levine said New York City is short roughly 500,000 apartments and blasted rent-stabilization rules for leaving 57,000 units sitting vacant because landlords cannot recoup renovation costs, calling the situation outrageous, the Post reported.
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Jul 19, 2026
A 24-unit rent-stabilized building at 502 West 135th Street in Harlem listed for $57,000 a unit, which landlord groups cited as evidence of falling values under the rent freeze and the 2019 tenant-protection law.
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Jul 6, 2026
The rate of vacant rent-stabilized apartments citywide rose to 5.6% in 2025, about 57,000 units out of roughly a million, up from 3.7% in 2016. Landlords outside Manhattan told The City Reporter that the rent freeze and the 2019 tenant-protection law made costly repairs financially impossible to recoup, pointing to the vacancy numbers as evidence the laws were hollowing out the stabilized housing stock.
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Jun 28, 2026
Arpit Gupta, the lone dissenting board member, said there was no City Hall interference in the vote, undercutting one possible line of legal attack.
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Jun 26, 2026
Mamdani publicly celebrated the freeze while landlord groups laid out their legal strategy: argue the board disregarded its own data showing a 5.3% rise in operating costs, with one in ten stabilized buildings not covering expenses from rent.
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Jun 25, 2026
The board voted 7 to 1 to freeze rents on one- and two-year lease renewals, the first two-year freeze in its history. Landlord representative Christina Smyth resigned the morning of the vote, writing that "this year's RGB order was decided last year on the campaign trail." REBNY and the New York Apartment Association immediately threatened lawsuits.
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Jun 25, 2026
The Rent Guidelines Board headed into its vote at Museo del Barrio in East Harlem with six of its nine members appointed by Mayor Mamdani, who campaigned on the freeze.
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Feb 18, 2026
Mamdani announced six appointments to the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board, naming New York Community Trust program director Chantella Mitchell as chair, appointing public members Sina Sinai, Lauren Melodia, and Brandon Mancilla and owner member Maksim Wynn, and reappointing Legal Aid Society attorney Adan Soltren as a tenant representative.
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Nov 4, 2025
Mamdani won the general election with over 50 percent of the vote to Cuomo's 42 percent and Curtis Sliwa's 7 percent, with more than 2 million ballots cast, turnout the city had not seen in half a century.
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Jun 30, 2025
Six days after the primary, the Adams-era board took its final vote before the mayoral transition, raising stabilized rents 3 percent on one-year leases and 4.5 percent on two-year leases.
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Jun 24, 2025
Mamdani, who campaigned on the pledge "As mayor, I will freeze the rent every year that I'm in office. That's a guarantee," won the Democratic mayoral primary in an upset, taking 44 percent of first-choice votes as Andrew Cuomo conceded on election night.
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Jun 17, 2024
The board approved increases of 2.75 percent on one-year leases and 5.25 percent on two-year leases, the third straight annual hike under Adams. Over Adams's four years the board raised one-year rents by a combined total of about 12 percent.
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Jun 21, 2022
Under Mayor Eric Adams, the board voted 5 to 4 to raise stabilized rents 3.25 percent on one-year leases and 5 percent on two-year leases, the highest increase in nearly a decade. Adams said the decision would be a burden to tenants while acknowledging landlords faced financial strain.
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Jun 1, 2020
In June 2020, during the pandemic, the board voted 6 to 3 to freeze rents on one-year renewals and on the first year of two-year leases, with a 1 percent increase in the second year, effective October 1, 2020. It was the third one-year freeze of the de Blasio era; the board rejected the tenant proposal for a full two-year freeze 3 to 6.
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Jun 1, 2016
In June 2016, the Rent Guidelines Board under Mayor Bill de Blasio froze rents on one-year lease renewals for a second consecutive year while approving a 2 percent increase on two-year leases. City Limits noted the board had historically delivered at least modest increases even during severe recessions.
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