It is estimated that about 1% of the total housing stock in New York City is rent controlled (2019 figure), which is something different than rent stabilized.

Generally the way the former works is that you have to have been living continuously in the home since July 1, 1971, and the building itself needs to have been constructed before 1947. If this is the case, then in theory, you should have seen relatively minor rent increases over the years.

This was the case for the late real estate agent, Alice Mason, who died at the beginning of this year at the age of 100:

She never left the rent-stabilized [controlled?] apartment where she held her storied dinners, in a century-old building on East 72nd Street. (In Manhattan real estate parlance, it was a classic eight, a gracious prewar layout that included three bedrooms and two maid’s rooms.) In 2011, the developer Harry Macklowe bought the building for a reported $70 million and began to turn the units into condos, buying out the tenants to do so. But Ms. Mason refused to give up her apartment. When she moved there in 1962, the rent was $400 a month. At her death, it was $2,476. The apartment below her, in the same line, was recently on the market for just under $10 million.

Green, Penelope. “Alice Mason, Real Estate Fixer and Hostess to the Elite, Dies at 100.” The New York Times, 13 Jan. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/style/alice-mason-dead.html.

For better or for worse, this is an obviously awesome deal, and reason enough to never move and have family members move in with you before you die so that you can try and pass down this asset for generations to come.

For those of you interested in real estate development (and architecture), the New York Times recently published an article about New York developer Harry Macklowe. 

At 80 years old, he has been in the business for almost 60 years and he has what some might describe as the typical developer story. He has seen ups. And he has seen downs. As a result of the 2008 economic crisis, he was forced to give up seven landmark properties in New York.

The article doesn’t paint a particularly nice picture about developers. It talks about how he demolished several single room occupancy hotels in midtown Manhattan (hours before a new moratorium was set to go into effect) and how he recently filed a lawsuit against his son, William Macklowe. After their relationship went south, William went off and started his own real estate company and presumably that is causing some problems.

There’a also mention of a book called The Liar’s Ball, which I am pretty sure would be a good read:

Real estate “is not an industry full of camaraderie and good will,” said Vicky Ward, the author of “The Liar’s Ball” (Wiley, 2014), a book about Mr. Macklowe and the G.M. building. Developers “are set up to dislike each other, yet occasionally they do come together to partner.”

If the real estate business has anything, it has characters. Click here for “Harry Macklowe on New York Real Estate.”