More than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments were sitting empty as of April last year, according to a new tally compiled by the state.
The figure was revealed in a letter that the state’s Division of Homes and Community Renewal sent to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board on Wednesday. Gothamist obtained a copy of the letter, which shows the number of vacant apartments rose by about 8,000 last year, with the largest increases in Brooklyn and Queens.
Officials cautioned that the count on April 1, 2025 of 57,421 empty units includes stabilized apartments in new buildings that have not yet been leased, as well as units awaiting a new tenant due to typical apartment turnover. The number also does not capture how many units were “warehoused” by landlords, or held off the market for multiple years. Still, the figure will add fuel to an ongoing debate between landlords and tenant advocates.
“These numbers prove there is a real problem here,” said New York Apartment Association Executive Vice President Jay Martin, whose organization represents landlords. “These units getting back online would have a measurable impact on rents in the neighborhoods where they’re located.”
Landlords say a 2019 measure that prevents them from raising rent on vacant stabilized units disincentivizes owners from fixing up apartments and putting them back on the market because current-allowable rents won’t offset renovation costs. Tenant groups say landlords are exaggerating the number of apartments that they are holding off the market to gain political support for their goal of weakening renter protections.
“When there are a million apartments, there are going to be some vacancies,” said Judith Goldiner, the lead attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s civil reform unit.
The new tally constitutes about 6% of the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. It is a point-in-time count that “does not indicate the cause of vacancy, condition of units or whether the units are transitioning between tenancies,” HCR Deputy Commissioner Anthony Tatano wrote to the Rent Guidelines Board.
“Such units may also include newly constructed buildings that have not yet been fully leased,” Tatano said.
Tenant groups, landlord lobbyists and policymakers have been locked in a yearslong battle over the state of the city’s rent-stabilized apartments and laws that limit rent increases on empty units. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge to freeze the rent on stabilized units has inflamed the fight.
Landlords and their representatives have filed multiple lawsuits since the new tenant protection law took effect in 2019 to try to force a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court and overturn the regulations
Martin said allowing landlords to raise rents on empty apartments would free up units during the city’s housing shortage. But the state data lacks nuance, making it difficult to draw specific conclusions.
It does not capture the total number of units that landlords are holding off the market because they don’t find renovations cost effective. It also includes an unknown number of units in newly constructed buildings awaiting a tenant – like thousands of apartments reserved for homeless New Yorkers – and, as Gothamist has reported, hundreds of affordable, rent-stabilized apartments that sit empty due to delays in the city’s housing lottery system.
Renter advocates encouraged lawmakers to approve the 2019 law that stopped owners from increasing rent by 20% on empty regulated units because many landlords had harassed tenants to force them out. Once a tenant left, the landlord could unlock the so-called “vacancy bonus,” raise the price for the next renter and even lift the unit out of the stabilization system once rent reached a certain threshold.
Some tenant groups have accused owners of deliberately holding apartments off the market while they await changes to the law, or because they want to clear and demolish an existing building. But Goldiner called that relatively rare.
“The number that landlords are ‘warehousing’ is very, very small,” Goldiner said.
Other recent analyses have shown a far lower number of empty units than the data issued by the state.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development counted about 26,000 units that were “vacant but unavailable for rent” during its most recent housing survey. A separate 2023 analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office counted about 13,000 units held vacant for multiple years.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development is now conducting its next survey, which will include more up-to-date vacancy figures.
Owners of rent-stabilized apartments are required to register the status of each apartment with the state housing agency each year or face fines.
In a written statement, Division of Homes and Community Renewal spokesperson Sochi Charnet said “a vacant registration does not indicate the cause of vacancy.”
The Rent Guidelines Board requested the information from the state housing agency as it approaches an annual vote on the next allowable increase on stabilized apartments. The nine-member board voted last month to consider a first-ever freeze on new two-year leases – putting them on pace to fulfill Mamdani’s pledge to “freeze the rent” each year of his term.
Mamdani has backed off the pledge since taking office and now says that the board should review relevant data before making its decision.
Rent Guidelines Board member Arpit Gupta, an economist, said the vacancy statistics are an important consideration because they could reveal “a situation where the landlords may not find it economically viable to rehab and rent these units.”
He said the state figures don’t capture the true number of apartments that landlords are holding off the market for financial reasons, but that he is concerned about the increase in vacancies from 2024 to 2025 contained in the data shared with the Rent Guidelines Board.
The number of vacancies registered with the state increased from 49,426 on April 1, 2024 to 57,421 on April 1, 2025.
“The worry is the trend,” Gupta said. “The trend is increasing.”
