While the city struggles with a massive housing shortage, tens of thousands of rent-stabilized apartments are sitting empty across the Big Apple.
A whopping 57,000 rent-stabilized units sat vacantacross the five boroughs in 2025, a 5.6% vacancy rate that is up from just 3.7% a decade earlier, according to state data obtained by the City Reporter. The data is self-reported from landlords of rent-stabilized buildings.
The vacancy rate ticked up to 7% in 2021, a year into the COVID pandemic, when the city’s population declined.
Rent-stabilized apartments are sitting vacant in New York City.Alene Photographs – stock.adobe.com
All boroughs but Manhattan saw vacancy rates climb between 2016 and 2025, the latest year for which data is available, according to the rates reported to the Division of Homes and Community Renewal.
The reasons for the vacancies aren’t clear as the data doesn’t track why the units are dark or how much repair work they actually need.
One housing expert Brendan Mitchell, director of real estate and finance at the Bronx-based University Neighborhood Housing Program, suspects the vacancy spike is a hangover from the pandemic, with courts finally clearing out backlogged eviction cases afterthe moratoriumlifted.
Contributing to the issue is the disparities in property owners’ costs and income.
Core Manhattan property owners saw their net operating incomes increase by 10%, compared to about 7% up in Queens and 4% up in Brooklyn and a drop in The Bronx, the data indicate.
Some property owners of the roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units in the city say they say they cannot afford to make the necessary major renovations.
Net operating incomes jumped 10% in wealthy core Manhattan, while in Brooklyn it rose just 4%.Spiroview Inc. – stock.adobe.com
Gutting a four-bedroom pre-war apartment can cost upwards of $50,000 — an impossible pill to swallow when the unit only brings in $800 a month, according to Mitchell.
Owners of rent-stabilized units can only raise rents so much due to caps determined by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, whichrecently approved a rent freezefor the next two years. Plus, the state enacted the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which prevents owners from bumping up the rent on empty units past city limits.
“A lot of real estate professionals will say, ‘It just doesn’t pay to gut-renovate an apartment in the city because I can’t raise the rent,’” Mark Bourbeau, president of Sycamore Birch Management, which oversees 50 properties in The Bronx, told the City Reporter.
The nonprofit founded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical tenant advocate Cea Weaver is pushing a Marxist scheme that will use more than $2 billion in taxpayer dough to “take housing off landlords’ hands.”
The New York State Tenant Bloc, which Weaver helmed until joining Mamdani’s administration in January, said it wants to deploy the newly approved taxpayer funds to allow tenant-backed groups to take over rent-stabilized units, but was coy about the details.
Cea Weaver founded and led the NYS Tenant Bloc before joining Mamdani’s administration in January.REUTERS
“If landlords can’t maintain their buildings, tenants will,” the group declared Monday on X. “The Mayor’s Housing Plan directs $2.2 billion to taking housing off their hands. Tenants are organizing to defend our communities and reclaim our homes.”
The social media post was part of a thread from the group gloating about Mamdani’s rent freeze, that ended with a sign-up link for tenants to “get organized…to make the rent freeze meaningful.”
It’s not the first time limousine liberals Mamdani – or Weaver – declared their intention to socialize housing.
As recently as late May, when Mamdani unveiled his “Block by Block” housing plan, he pledged to “transfer ownership” of neglected buildings to community land trusts, nonprofits and tenants.
“The tenant groups essentially are looking at that $2.2 billion as a slush fund to be able to buy and take over these buildings,” Jay Martin, Executive Vice President of the New York Apartment Association, told The Post.
“To presume that the NYS Tenant Block isn’t also speaking from a place where Cea Weaver, her views aren’t being expressed through the tenant block, is naive,” he added.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a historic two-year rent freeze last month on rent-stabilized units.OLGA FEDOROVA/EPA/Shutterstock
“She controls housing policy out of the mayor’s office. It’s clear, as far as older housing, she controls it. She’s always been the mayor’s north star.”
A review by The Post previously found Mamdani’s plan to seize housing involved dragging bad landlords to court to have a judge appoint a non-profit to take over — and using the city’s Housing Development Fund Corporation to give loans and tax breaks for tenants to collectively take ownership of their buildings.
A $2 billion sum, which would pass through NYC’s Housing Preservation and Development Department for “ownership transfers,” was quietly embedded in Mamdani’s “Block by Block” plan.
“There are nonprofits right now that are city assisted with funding, that have no property taxes, and because of the rent stabilization law, they can’t make ends meet,” Martin added.
The rent freeze was one of Mamdani’s key campaign promises and helped propel him to City Hall.OLGA FEDOROVA/EPA/Shutterstock
“It’s not a solution for the broken, rent-stabilized housing market right now. It is just a transfer of ownership of assets that are in deep, deep trouble.
Weaver previously admitted freezing rents will “deepen the crises” in the rent-stabilized housing market and cause building conditions to “deteriorate” in an essay just before she took office. But she didn’t see that as a bug but a feature, arguing it’ll force struggling property owners into foreclosure and make it easier to seize private property.
Asides from repeatedly calling to “seize private property,” Weaver — a white middle-class transplant who attended a pricey private liberal arts college — also blasted homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in a series of pro-communist social media posts that resurfaced when she was picked to lead the resurrected Office to Protect Tenants for Mamdani.
“Preservation programs are a core pillar of any serious housing strategy, because protecting existing homes is just as important as building new ones,” a City Hall spokesperson told The Post.
“This administration is investing in the long-term health of our housing stock, including the purchase of distressed buildings where necessary, so tenants are not left at the mercy of neglect or speculation.”
The Mamdani administration has unveiled rules for how the city’s newpied-à-terre tax will be enforced — with the first surcharge notices going out in the coming weeks, The Post has learned.
The DOF has subpoena power and can conduct audits going back six years to determine whether a property should be taxed or exempt.
One-to-3 family homes worth at least $5 million and co-ops and condominiums valued at $1 million or more — that are unoccupied, non-primary residences —would be subject to the surcharge, approved by the state Legislature.
The DOF has subpoena power and can conduct audits going back six years to determine whether a property should be taxed or exempt.
And it can impose a fine equal to 50% of the pied-à-terre tax bill for providing false, inaccurate or misleading information — in a bid to crack down on “gamesmanship” by owners seeking to avoid the levy, according to the rules.
The city particularly highlighted as an example, “a condominium property [that] has been divided into more than three units to avoid application of the surcharge and such division was made in bad faith.”
“This provision would promote compliance with the surcharge by increasing the potential cost of evasion by property owners while ensuring that such property owners are afforded an opportunity to challenge the imposition of such penalties,” the regulation states.
City officials estimate the pied-à-terre tax will generate between $340 million and $500 million in annual revenue from approximately 10,000 luxury second homes.Paul Martinka
Owners will have 30 days to appeal or challenge the new tax bill imposed on non-primary residences. Appeals would be made to the city’s Tax Commission, or in some cases to the DOF.
The surcharge — part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his Democratic Socialists of America comrades’ “tax the rich” crusade — aims to target wealthy people who don’t live in New York City, but own residential property here that sits unoccupied.
One-to-three family homes will be taxed at a rate of between 0.8% to 1.3% depending on their value, while the rate for co-ops and condos starts at 4% and goes up to 6.5% for those worth over $5 million.
Co-ops and condos are believed to be undervalued, based on the city’s property value assessment system, so the higher rate of tax will allow the city to collect more revenue from them, real estate insiders said.
Billionaire Citadel CEO Ken Griffin’s city property tax bill could jump $1.3M to $1.4M under the new tax.REUTERS
The DOF is expected to recalculate their value in two years, as part of “phase two” of the tax, which will lapse in 2031 unless the Legislature renews it.
The real estate industry has long opposed the pied-à-terre tax, citing complexity in determining who is covered and collecting it — and insiders said there are sure to be lawsuits contesting the mandate.
Real estate sources note the new tax would be a headache for co-op boards responsible for helping collect the surcharge from a shareholder or owner of an apartment in the building.
“The Department of Finance’s proposed rules highlight the serious challenges of implementing the second-home tax fairly,” said Zachary Steinberg, executive vice president of external relations & advocacy at the Real Estate Board of New York.
“As the City rushes to roll out this new tax, many New Yorkers—particularly cooperative apartment owners who were never intended to be affected—may be hit with unexpected tax bills and little time to appeal,” the REBNY rep added.
The rules go into effect after the public comment period closes July 9.
Most comments thus far favor the pied-a-terre tax, but there are naysayers.
“Communism at its finest. This law will ensure that anyone with a second home here will be driven out of NYC if they have not already left. You are chasing your tax bases away,” one anonymous response said.
But Mohamed Fathelbab, a licensed real estate agent said, “I’m telling you all, this tax will not chase a single multimillionaire or billionaire away from the city. And the revenue that’ll come in will be of great benefit.”
Billionaire hedge fund honcho Ken Griffin’s city property tax bill is reportedly estimated to go up about $1.3 to $1.4 million under the new tax, approved by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers at the behest of Mamdani to help fill city coffers.
The democratic socialist Mamdani caused a stir when he singled out the Citadel founder’s penthouse as eligible for the tax in a viral video filmed outside the residence.
