> Rent stabilization sets maximum rates for annual rent increases and, as with rent control, entitles tenants to receive required services from their landlords along with lease renewals. The rent guidelines board meets every year to determine how much the landlord can charge. Violations may cause a tenant's rent to be lowered.
> I did find this wiki page on rent regulation in NY, it mentions something about rent control and living continuously in a place since a certain cutoff date:
That's rent control, not rent stabilization. There is no cutoff date for rent stabilization. Different units became stabilized for a variety of different reasons over the years.
The article briefly mentions the definition, but not in detail. They're part of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) programs for affordable housing in big cities. SROs have fallen out of favor with no good alternative, but they've been a lifeline for friends of mine.
A little known fact is that hotels constructed in New York City "before July 1, 1969 which cost less than $88 per week or $350 per month on May 31, 1968" are subject to a law that states that guests are entitled to become a permanent tenant by requesting a lease of six months or more, and hotels are generally barred from preventing such people from doing such that.
There's someone who has been trying to claim ownership through this mechanism of the New Yorker hotel across from Penn Station, with surprising amounts of success:
Well, and I see the owner of that hotel is the Unification Church (a.k.a. "The Moonies"). Now that's another wild read if you have some time to kill.
One son of the founder is the owner of Kahr Arms (the arms manufacturer), and cofounded with his brother the "Rod of Iron Ministries", a weird gun centered church where they do AR-15 rituals and stuff...
Both churches are involved in heavy lgtb hate, anti communism (although seems like they sent some money to North Korea in the 90s) and some other stuff...
> At one time, there were many affordable places where a single person like Hasegawa could live in New York City. Many hotels offered accommodations consisting of a single bed in a cubicle, or a private room with a shared kitchen and bathroom.
> In the mid-20th century there were close to 200,000 units designated as SROs — single room occupancy. But by the 1970s, they had gained a reputation as hotbeds for criminal activity and the city began to shut them down.
So it was common at that time for hotels to offer long-term apartment rentals, but no longer.
It's kind of maddening that cities cracked down on SROs because of crime and then complain about all the homeless people and crime they have on the streets. What did they think was going to happen? That residents were going to move into proper apartments? They probably would have already if they could, so now the problems are worse as a result.
puts em on the street and now they're someone else's problem. a lot of them would then filter out to other areas, generally warmer ones, or areas that were easy to police.
these measures are, on a long scale, what drove a lot of homeless and almost-homeless to the south and west. NYC winters will kill you, but it's not hard to scrounge up a bus ticket to SC
“For several decades, various cities and towns in the United States have adopted relocation programs offering homeless people one-way tickets to move elsewhere. Also referred to as "Greyhound therapy", "bus ticket therapy" and "homeless dumping", the practice was historically associated with small towns and rural counties, which had no shelters or other services, sending homeless individuals tickets to the nearest large city. More recently, a nationwide investigation by The Guardian in 2017 found that many homeless relocation programs are offered by cities with high median incomes, helping people move to places with cheaper housing and a lower cost of living, but also fewer economic opportunities. While some individuals welcome assistance to help them relocate, others say that they have felt "targeted" and forced to move, under the threat of arrest by police.”
“New York appears to have been the first major city to begin a relocation program for homeless people, back in 1987. After the current iteration of the program was relaunched during the tenure of mayor Michael Bloomberg, it ballooned, and its relocation scheme is now far larger than any other in the nation. The city homelessness department budgets $500,000 for it annually.
Almost half the approximately 34,000 journeys analyzed by the Guardian originate from New York. In contrast with other relocation initiatives, New York is notable for moving large numbers of families, like the Ortizes.”
NYC used to have a lot of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) residential hotels that functioned more like cheap apartments. Rent stabilization applies to buildings built before 1974 and kicks in for residents once they’ve been in a place for 6 months. Years ago the city changed the zoning laws to restrict SROs so there aren’t nearly as many as there were in the 80’s but a few have stuck around.
Everyone has kinda answered your question about these old practices carrying over. We're seeing the end of the last surviving hotel residents - recently NYT covered the eviction of an 82-year-old, who took over a contract from his aunt https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/nyregion/stewart-hotel-lo...
Nikola Tesla famously died in his residential room at the New Yorker Hotel, and I recently learned that after his presidency, Herbert Hoover lived at the Waldolf Astoria for 30 years.
For what it's worth, I had never heard of a rent-stabilized hotel room either. (American) From some other comments here, it sounds like the accommodations were more of an apartment than a hotel room.
One of the less talked about aspects of rent stabilized apartments is how people become trapped in them.
I know people who have been living in rent stabilized apartments in NYC for decades who will never let them go, even though they no longer like the neighborhood or the unit.
Of course, it is hard to feel sorry for someone living in a $1,200/mo 1-bedroom in a nice area in Manhattan.
I feel the same for people with near 0% interest rate mortgages. Like we bought a starter home prior to the pandemic. Buying the same home now would be 3.5x the monthly mortgage payment. Buying a slightly nicer, 1 extra bedroom near our neighborhood is completely out of the question. Since no one wants to move because rates are so high it creates a vicious loop of more buyers than inventory on sale.
Can you not port mortgages in America? I have 4 years left on my mortgage, if I want to move though I can simply sell this place, buy somewhere new, and phone up my mortgage company and take the debt with me - as long as the new place is about the same or more than the current place (so the LTV stays the same or better).
Not typically AFAIK. The mortgage is secured by a specific piece of property which has been inspected, title-searched, etc. It's not a random unsecured loan. It's also the case in the US that you can generally just pay off the loan any time you want.
There's some exceptions, USDA, VA, and FHA loans. All government programs. But it's tied to the property so only transferable to the purchaser. Very rare here even now with rates changing so much.
No, mortgage portability is not a thing in the US, at all. Mortgages are tied to the property and the borrowers. I've never heard of a (US) borrower being able to sell their property and keep the loan. Alternatively, it is sometimes possible for a new borrower to assume the previous mortgage, but it's up to lender discretion, and seems unlikely if a current mortgage would be at a dramatically higher rate.
What does seem to happen often is that an owner who wants to move but doesn't want to lose their nice rate will move and then rent our their old place, or at least try to, it can be difficult to qualify for a new mortgage while carrying the old mortgage and not having a history of rent payments.
Assumable mortgages were a (common) thing until the low interest mortgage Era. But they are (again) a thing and in-fact add premium value to the selling price of a home if your mortgage happens to have the feature along with a low interest rate. VA mortgages are the convenient example for this but there are other types of assumable residential notes as well.
https://therealdeal.com/national/2023/06/12/assumable-mortga...
Normally in the U.K. they are fixed for a period of time - 5 years is quite common, but you can get 10 and even full term ones. You can also get ones which track the base rate.
Typically people refix after the term. My 5 year recently ended and my monthly cost increased as I’m now fixed at a higher rate for another 5 years - at 4.5%, although it’s still less %age of my wage than it was 5 years ago.
During the fixed term you can’t repay it without a penalty, but if you move house you can port the mortgage so it’s secured against the new house instead.
Matt Levine wrote about this recently. In theory there's a win-win trade where you should be able to buy out your 3% mortgage at a discount (or equivalently, pay it off and get a mortgage on a new place at a slightly higher rate). In practice, banks won't do this because they figure you're bluffing and will eventually move anyway.
Yep. It's using the fed to reallocate money from the inflated cash based poor to the credit rich home owner. Home owners are basically using government induced negative real interest rates to regressively tax non-homeowners.
We got blown away by the pandemic that locked up the housing stock. So I cheated and built my own house for like 1/4 the cost it is on the market as it's almost all markup from the opportunity cost of losing the 0% loan.
For those that have lost hope seriously consider a prefab for like 60k dropped on some vacant land. Where I live you don't even need inspections or license to do it yourself. But you need to develop the land yourself, and not hire out a GC, because developers will always be chasing high margin luxury builds rather than the low margin methods I've discovered for economical housing.
I was not intending to make that case. Negative real interest in our real life reality where the better off have better access to credit nearly certainly hurts cash based poor by making homes etc cost less in real terms to the rich at the expense of inflating the poor.
Basically the poor have worse access to credit than other groups so when interest goes negative in real terms the poor pay for it.
My friend has a rent controlled -- huge LR, kitchen, dining room, 2 hallways, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 18 foot ceilings, in low 80s upper east side. $500/month. I think his neighbor's rent is like $6500. Yeah he's not leaving.
Living the high life, literally in terms of the ceilings. Having ceilings like that is so mind-blowing in a living space, as it opens everything up drastically. That is an insane rent. From the description, the size is great. What is the condition and quality of the place? And I'm not all that familiar with New York's neighborhoods. Is low 80s upper east side a good neighborhood?
High ceilings mean flats also take a lot more energy to heat in winter. If heating were out of my own pocket, I might pass on a flat with high ceilings even if rent were attractively low. Do NYC blocks like the GP describes typically include heating in the rent?
> It's wealthy, but not anywhere near the wealthiest area in the country, or even in Manhattan.
It is, depending on the year, how you measure it, and what you consider "Upper East Side". That last part is important: the UES has three main subneighborhoods with very different demographics and characteristics. It's also adjacent to East Harlem, which is historically not wealthy and brings the mean/median down for any measure that includes part of it.
For example, here the Upper East Side is listed as the wealthiest neighborhood in the entire city, all five boroughs: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/6/27/15881706/nyc-richest-neighbo.... This is using household income, which is one measure. Alternate measures include median rent (skewed due to rent regulations), net worth, property values, etc.
Point is: calling the upper east side an "upper middle class" area is an understatement. If it's not a wealthy neighborhood, then nowhere is.
The averages skew things a bit here. Yes, many of the wealthiest people in the world live in the UES, but in between those single-family mansions and full service buildings full of quiet billionaires on the park, there are plenty of unremarkable apartments occupied by white-collar families. Its a more affordable neighborhood to rent in than some other family-oriented parts of Manhattan.
"Early 80s" would refer to the year. "Lower 80s" in Manhattan means they live somewhere in the area bounded to the south by 80th Street and to the north by 85th Street--which includes part of the Upper East Side.
I know you are asking genuinely but to a New Yorker it sounds like you’re making a joke. A few from facts from Wikipedia [1].
“It has long been the most affluent neighborhood in New York City.”
“The Upper East Side maintains the highest pricing per square foot in the United States.”
“Four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP Code, 10021, is on the Upper East Side and generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.”
I figured, but my perception of Manhattan is that neighborhoods can change drastically from one street block to the next, so while I know the upper east side is generally, well, upper, I wasn't confident in the exact location. Also, I was just flat out lazy and didn't bother looking up the street numbers on a map, where I would have realized the proximity to Central Park.
Aside from a few historically sleazy streets/areas in the past, I don't really associate those sorts of sharp boundaries with Manhattan nearly as much as I do some other cities, especially in the South. (Though, for obvious reasons, apartment buildings/condos across from Central Park tend to be higher-end than those east of there.)
I briefly lived in Manhattan, and I think my neighbor across the hall was in such a unique situation.
The building was an old one in the center of Manhattan, but newly renovated. I moved in in 2021, and I think everybody had moved in within the last 5 years. There were a bunch of young professionals that had graduated from NYU and such.
But this guy was the only one without the iPhone electronic lock on his door -- and good for him, the iPhone locks are a reason why I moved out of the building! (Unsurprisingly, the locks once malfunctioned and we were locked out of the building. Computers make everything work very poorly these days.)
Anyway, I chatted with him in the elevator, and once asked when he moved in. I believe he said 1989 -- anyway, it was like 3 decades.
He didn't look to be more than 40, so I guess he must have lived there as a child, and inherited the apartment.
Also, whenever I talked to him, he would say something super political without prompting, like "Adams is fucking slob, under Giuliani we had law and order" or something.
(Also, he was black, which may break your mental image a bit.)
A bit of an aside because it sounds like he really did live there full-time, but another reason why people in RS units wouldn't want an phone-enabled lock on their door is it possibly gives the landlord information on how often they come and go.
Some people who have units like that live somewhere else but just can't bring themselves to let the things go, so they use them as storage and go by once a week to check the mail.
I lived in a nice apartment building in Toronto from 2015-2020. One couple in the building had lived in the same rent-stabilized apartment there since 1967.
On the bright side, it was a well-maintained building in a good neighborhood, so they had reasons to enjoy it being just the price.
Do you mean rent stablized specifically vs controlled?
About 1% of NYC apartments are rent controlled, about 50% are rent stabilized.
In controlled units you might see a minor increase over time, but generally you're paying what the unit was priced at 50 years ago. Leaving typically means an increase in rent of 500-700%, and these are practically impossible for new tenants to get.
In stablized units the rent can only be increased by a percentage determined by a board, typically 2-3% a year.
Stabilized units can increase something like 4% a year, up until they hit the threshold that takes them out of stabilization.
Controlled units can increase 2% every two years and historically did not do so from the 90s until a few years ago where increases have been happening and the housing board has advocated on behalf of landlords for additional/emergency increases.
Rent increases can happen completely separate from this process through building improvements and from the late 80s through to the early 2000s, my landlord managed to add $700 onto our controlled rent through really shady/shoddy/fake building improvements.
Growing up about 80% of the units in the building were rent-controlled and when I left there was was only 1 controlled unit left after mine. Nobody in my family, even though they all still live in NYC, wanted to take over the apartment.
Most controlled apartment renters die and have nobody eligible to take them over (an immediate family member has to cohabitate for like 2 years with the renter). The number remaining across all of NYC is exceedingly small, like under 15000. There are ~4 million housing units in NYC. Rent-controlled apartments are true unicorns. But close to 75% are stabilized.
They would do shit like slap a coat of primer on the hallways and add $50/mo in permanent rent to everyone's bill (90 unit building).
Rent Guidelines change every year. They've typically been 2% or lower. Due to high inflation, the latest increase is 3.0%. [1]
There is no longer High-rent or High-income rent decontrol since 2019. Individual Apartment Improvements and Major Capital Improvement now provide a much smaller basis for rent increases and/or are temporary. [2]
missing the forest for the trees. three years of change doesn't make any difference.
To have rent control you have to have been in your apartment since before 1970. Capital improvements are how rent-controlled apartments had their rents jacked up between then and now. The majority of decontrol happened before any changes made in 2019.
The suggestion made before was that rent-controlled apartments were locked into the prices people paid 50 years ago and that's not remotely true. Also the number of rent-controlled apartments remaining in NYC is practically insignificant.
The OP was unclear, controlled units are certainly not "locked into" any price. To your point:
> rent control operates under the Maximum Base Rent (MBR) system. A maximum
base rent is established for each apartment and adjusted every two years to reflect changes in operating costs. Owners [...] are entitled to raise rents the [..] the average of the five most recent Rent Guidelines Board annual rent increases for one year renewal leases [...] until they reach the MBR
I had a rent controlled apartment in Midtown for ~$1300/mo. It's the apartment I grew up in and I finally got fed up and left two years ago.
The landlord put giant holes in my floor to get access to some pipes and wouldn't fix them for over a year.
After leaving the landlord tried to bill tens of thousands of dollars to bring the apartment up to their current standards -- even though we'd been in there since 1970 and the landlord never spent a cent on modernizing the apartment along the way. 100% of the renovations and upgrades we did ourselves. The apartment was left in great condition.
I completely agree with you that it's a trap. The place made me completely miserable and even though at the end I finally earned decent money to leave, I chose to leave the city entirely.
> rent controlled apartment in Midtown for ~$1300/mo
> landlord tried to bill tens of thousands of dollars to bring the apartment up to their current standards
> landlord never spent a cent on modernizing the apartment along the way
Surely you see that these are directly connected. With an increasing cost of living and a legally fixed profitability per month that isn't going up over time nor keeping up with inflation, from the landlord's perspective, there's little to no incentive for them to fork over cash they never got from the apartment to put back into it. At that point the only incentive is to hold onto the property itself and wait for its value to increase while deducting depreciation, and perversely, they are incentivized to make you as uncomfortable as possible since they cannot raise the rent on the unit until you move.
It's my opinion that if we want rent control, there should be a cap on the amount of time that ends sooner than "on death", especially if you're not old. (For old people who are basically living in the last unit of their lives, it makes sense to me to rent-control those).
> Surely you see that these are directly connected. With an increasing cost of living and a legally fixed profitability per month that isn't going up over time nor keeping up with inflation, from the landlord's perspective, there's little to no incentive for them to fork over cash they never got from the apartment to put back into it. At that point the only incentive is to hold onto the property itself and wait for its value to increase while deducting depreciation, and perversely, they are incentivized to make you as uncomfortable as possible since they cannot raise the rent on the unit until you move.
Sure and we also stayed and maintained the building and the landlord's property through the 70s and 80s when New York was a cess pit. My neighborhood was famous for petty crime and was full of pimps, street hookers, bums and scammers -- New York was half empty compared to now.
My landlord still had their property because of tenants like us who stayed when life in NY was grim. I was just around the corner from a building famous for the landlord trying to burn the tenants out (The Windermere).
Also what the landlord was doing by not completing the repair was illegal. Fineable. Slumlordish. Having a 2' round, 1' deep hole in the doorway of my bathroom floor is a massive safety issue. You're saying my landlord shouldn't be required to repair it because of incentive? If I fell in their hole and hit my head on the toilet and died, they would have a multi-million dollar liability on their hands.
Anyone who thinks that landlords can or should be expected to pay for repairs from thin air would not get along with me, true. It's tough being a realist adult instead of a fantasy-prone child, I guess
> You're saying my landlord shouldn't be required to repair it because of incentive?
I'm saying the landlord shouldn't be expected to lose money on a unit. That's really not a drastic thing to expect, unless you are an entitled child who simply expects things to be given to them.
You were living in a rent-controlled apartment and your non-rent-controlled neighbors were likely paying double, triple or more what you were paying. Your expectation of even more beyond the privilege of living in an area that you should have been paying many times more for, is astonishing to me. You have CLEARLY never owned any kind of property, either to live in or rent out. That means there's this entire segment of reality that you have zero exposure to which is tainting your worldview with falsities about what owning property is like.
This reminds me of a story a lawyer friend told me about one of her coworkers. They all work for a nonprofit but this one coworker demanded to be paid more, based on nothing. Complete unrealism. shrug.gif
One day you should try buying any property at all, and try renting it out at cost while also still doing all the paperwork and having to eat the bills that continue to flow (such as mortgage) even when it's vacant. Then, also spend tons of time going to court to attend to frivolous lawsuits made by slightly-crazy tenants.
I think most people 'trapped' in a rent-stabilized apartment would prefer it to homelessness.
I understand this may make the neighbours feel jealous, but hey, I'm jealous of my neighbour who bought his house for 1/3rd of what I paid for mine... Life's not fair.
Having worked in consulting & travelled for 95% of the time, I would not wish living in a hotel on anyone. I think my friends thought my life was glamorous flying all the time & going to different places.
My travel maxed out at about 50% at peak. But that's traveling to generally interesting places and almost never for more than about three weeks at a time. I was mostly fine with that but always had a home base to return to.
Hotels that allow one to live there permanently, accord what is essentially a private apartment, albeit often with the possibility of convenient meals and housekeeping. In terms of the ability to settle in and feel homey, is not very different from renting some flat from a landlord.
> essentially a private apartment, albeit often with the possibility of convenient meals and housekeeping
i think it would be interesting to see more places lean into this. personally, I would gladly give up my apartment's kitchen in exchange for a staffed central building kitchen
the chefs there are probably better cooks than me anyway
I would find eating out all the time to get very old. Even a stovetop and refrigerator would help a lot. I'm fine when I'm traveling--though I like a refrigerator--but I have the advantage of knowing it's not an open-ended thing.
Lots of these sort of rooms have a kitchenette, with at least a cooktop and small fridge. At least the more modern versions The are bigger also, and sometimes suites (e.g. a separated bedroom).
I think some of the older ones had shared kitchens, more like a dorm setup.
The central dining rooms in such places are more like college, corporate, or hospital cafeterias, there's usually healthier options available and the focus is decidedly tilted towards cost-savings vs. offerings that compete with high-end restaurants.
I'd dare say most people are better off eating from such a cafeteria for 80-90% of their meals, so long as they have the option 10-20% of the time to go out and get something different to switch things up.
Aren't those negatives mainly due to the transient nature of traveling? This particular hotel seems quite nice, and when I'm in an area for a long time, I don't particularly mind being in a hotel, especially if that hotel has good food.
It is my understanding, especially in New York, that it was not uncommon for people to have residency in hotels in the early 1900s. I've always found that a bit interesting. Even today, I know there are some condos you can buy in upscale hotels, where you have access to the amenities, such as the restaurant, laundry, and cleaning services.
> Aren't those negatives mainly due to the transient nature of traveling?
Nope. It's stuff like:
Lack of space. Think how much smaller your hotel room is compared to an apartment. You want to buy your own TV, with a sound system, and do an Arduino project? No space.
Poor sound proofing: Lots of noise from neighbors.
No kitchen: It's fine if you're gone for a few days, but if you're in one for a month, you likely will need to cook something. Most people can't afford to eat out all the time (and it's not healthy to do so).
I recall once while in school, there was a new fancy apartment complex being built that students had signed a lease for. Unfortunately, there were delays so the company set them up in a hotel for 2 months till the apartment was ready. These are all the complaints those students had about the hotel experience. Nice in the beginning, but not a good long term solution.
An electric range for $60 goes a long way. Hell when I was homeless I used a portable gas stove that even works on siphoned gasoline, and packs up in a bag about the diameter of a cellphone wide, hardly ever needed to eat out.
And where are you going to store cookware and tableware and spices and other ingredients in a hotel room? Some suites or longstay rooms are better equiped for it, but regular hotel rooms just aren't designed for long-term residence.
People have lived in e.g. bedsits in the UK for years and still managed to store enough utensils and spices for their own use. There are even vandwellers and overlanders who are gourmets and pleasurably cook in the space they have.
When I visit the US I am always struck by how much stuff people own there, and a lot of that is kitchen stuff specifically. But most of the world -- including many other developed countries -- make do with less and don't necessarily even think about it.
Camping equipment is designed to be compact and fit in a backpack, all of this stuff was figured out by the 1930s traveling workers who were known as hobos.
You don't need a large variety of spices, and spices are compact as heck.
If you're going to cook, you can buy same-day or even a few days' worth of food.
Cooking with a compact set of portable kitchen tools and economized storage for basic foodstuffs and spices is absolutely not the same as living like a literal hobo. Again, millions, possibly billions of people live like this and often very comfortably. What you say is both plain condescending and all the worse in that for also being ignorant nonsense.
Well, you could, for example, store it in a small piece of shelving furniture that you get somewhere, right next to your little portable range stove (electric or gas) problem solved for an incredibly broad amount of cooking, pretty much anything that doesn't require baking, and there are even pots that let you get around that, compact slow cookers too. No hotel room is so small that it doesn't fit such modest tools.
Do you really think it's near impossible to endure hotel room or compact apartment living living unless you can absolutely have the tools and space of a full-blown suburban kitchen in there? Comments like these truly remind me of how removed a certain subset is from how billions of people can live comfortably for years on end by improvising modestly.
Similar to another example comment I saw by someone on this site who really thought that it was just impossible to make coffee at home unless he had a full-blown espresso/capuchino machine of the kind some commercial cafe might use.
You really do want at least a kitchenette for any real length of time. I'm pretty good with just a refrigerator--assuming decent eat out and takeout options--for a few weeks but probably wouldn't want to go much longer than that. A hotel room doesn't have a lot of space but then a furnished studio apartment won't either.
It also helps if you know you'll be back in your house in a month or even two--and you're fine with just not doing some activities/hobbies while you travel.
What are you comparing to? Even chain extended stay hotels have affordable suites that are similar to a typical apartment outside of the USA. From a studio [1] to a 2bdr [2]. If you have money you can go for something flashier, like MGM Signature in LV [3]
Those are extended stay places. Costs more and may not be an option for the funder. For sure the apartment complex didn't pay for that type of a suite.
Oh and of course the folks still had to pay their rent those months. It seems like a nice deal because the monthly rates for those rooms are a lot more than the rent they paid but in reality they're getting less than what they paid for.
Ha. We clearly stay in different hotels and live in different kinds of apartments. I find most hotels I've ever been in to be quieter and often nearly as spacious as any apartment I've ever lived in.
That was not uncommon in most older American cities. Kansas City for example has a number of former residential hotels, as does New Orleans.
It's not like these were a Holiday Inn or something!
The difference with modern hotel residences is that they tend to have a full kitchen etc, and be more of a condo building with a hotel at the bottom (usually).
I was a road warrior back in the day... if I were going to be in a place for an extended stay - say a month or more - I'd look into furnished corporate housing. Likely more space and better amenities, possibly even cheaper than an extended hotel stay. A step down from that, the "extended stay" hotels with a kitchenette and more space aren't terrible apart from the often frat-like atmosphere.
My trips were always the Sunday night out, Thursday night home type, where probably the biggest issue is the disorientation. One Courtyard Marriott looks just like another, even across countries. Rental cars quickly lose any excitement. Stuck in some suburban office park with your choice of Chilibees or Ruby Garden? You can see where nutrition quickly drops to zero if you aren't really cognizant. And then there's the relationship part. If I'd been single it might have been awesome, but I had little kids at home and it was a tough few years for what in hindsight was limited financial and career gain. Glad we live in an era where more of the work can be done remotely.
The pandemic did a cold turkey number on my travel. I'm back to doing some but I'm being much more selective and I'm also trying to plan things so that I spend a smaller percentage of my travel time dealing with airports and air travel.
I hotel hopped (ie - changed hotels every couple of weeks) for most of 2022 around DFW.
Space considerations aside, the worst part is the noise. From hearing people next door due to thin walls, to people stomping around above you, to housekeepers letting each and every door they open slam shut, and more, the best takeaway I had was that if I rented an apartment and it was noisy, escaping to a hotel would not be the right solution.
However, I will 100% recommend booking a hotel over using a vacation rental website (I'm not going to name names to stem aby free advertising).
One concern I have with an extended vacation rental is it seems like something of a dice roll if you don't have prior experience with a property. If a hotel stay isn't great, that's probably OK since it will probably only be for a week or less. A one to two month vacation property rental feels like a much bigger gamble.
They’re a few things different here. She lived in what we today would call an apartment hotel. She had an actual kitchenette, not just a kettle. She didn’t move every few days.
I’ve lived in apartment hotels for 1-2 months at a time for the past 6 month and it can be quite addictive coming home to a well made bed.
YMMV. I travel >95% of the time and love it.
I think it depends on how long you’re staying and how much freedom you have in booking your accommodation and travel.
I avoid hotels and almost always rent an apartment.
Over 800 days in hotel in the past three years. Its a rather difficult life, and hard to explain how it impacts you.
Time difference, doctor/dental visits, mail, family, and work life balance are brutal.
Getting a call when your partner totals a car, and ends up having one of their worst days, and just needs a physical person to see and comfort them really makes it seem pointless. Life happens and its hard enough when you're able to return home everyday.
Even if you generally like travel, beyond a certain threshold, you lose contact with people/local activities and there are a lot of logistical challenges to either not having a home base or maintaining one that you do have--especially a house. I maxed out at about 150 days a year and that was a lot.
One of my grand-uncles lived in the Park Plaza Hotel. He was a widower, a WWII vet, and loved the city. I was a kid at the time so assumed his lifestyle was closer to "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" and didn't know what an SRO was. I assumed he was able to afford it on his Army pension, LOL!
Hart Island (where the occupant was buried) has an interesting history:
"The remains of more than one million people are buried on Hart Island, though since the first decade of the 21st century, there are fewer than 1,500 burials a year. Burials on Hart Island include individuals who were not claimed by their families or did not have private funerals; the homeless and the indigent; and mass burials of disease victims."
Rarely, there are tours. The dock is on the east side of City Island. Incarcerated NYS/NYC prisoners are conscripted for burial and brush cleanup duty, so you would occasionally see those buses parked at the dock.
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> Rent stabilization sets maximum rates for annual rent increases and, as with rent control, entitles tenants to receive required services from their landlords along with lease renewals. The rent guidelines board meets every year to determine how much the landlord can charge. Violations may cause a tenant's rent to be lowered.
Basically a cap on rent increases, looks like.
That's rent control, not rent stabilization. There is no cutoff date for rent stabilization. Different units became stabilized for a variety of different reasons over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
There's someone who has been trying to claim ownership through this mechanism of the New Yorker hotel across from Penn Station, with surprising amounts of success:
https://viewfromthewing.com/new-york-city-transfers-hotel-de...
One son of the founder is the owner of Kahr Arms (the arms manufacturer), and cofounded with his brother the "Rod of Iron Ministries", a weird gun centered church where they do AR-15 rituals and stuff...
Both churches are involved in heavy lgtb hate, anti communism (although seems like they sent some money to North Korea in the 90s) and some other stuff...
> At one time, there were many affordable places where a single person like Hasegawa could live in New York City. Many hotels offered accommodations consisting of a single bed in a cubicle, or a private room with a shared kitchen and bathroom.
> In the mid-20th century there were close to 200,000 units designated as SROs — single room occupancy. But by the 1970s, they had gained a reputation as hotbeds for criminal activity and the city began to shut them down.
So it was common at that time for hotels to offer long-term apartment rentals, but no longer.
these measures are, on a long scale, what drove a lot of homeless and almost-homeless to the south and west. NYC winters will kill you, but it's not hard to scrounge up a bus ticket to SC
From NYC, you don’t need to pay for a ticket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation_pr...:
“For several decades, various cities and towns in the United States have adopted relocation programs offering homeless people one-way tickets to move elsewhere. Also referred to as "Greyhound therapy", "bus ticket therapy" and "homeless dumping", the practice was historically associated with small towns and rural counties, which had no shelters or other services, sending homeless individuals tickets to the nearest large city. More recently, a nationwide investigation by The Guardian in 2017 found that many homeless relocation programs are offered by cities with high median incomes, helping people move to places with cheaper housing and a lower cost of living, but also fewer economic opportunities. While some individuals welcome assistance to help them relocate, others say that they have felt "targeted" and forced to move, under the threat of arrest by police.”
That Guardian article says (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...):
“New York appears to have been the first major city to begin a relocation program for homeless people, back in 1987. After the current iteration of the program was relaunched during the tenure of mayor Michael Bloomberg, it ballooned, and its relocation scheme is now far larger than any other in the nation. The city homelessness department budgets $500,000 for it annually.
Almost half the approximately 34,000 journeys analyzed by the Guardian originate from New York. In contrast with other relocation initiatives, New York is notable for moving large numbers of families, like the Ortizes.”
Nikola Tesla famously died in his residential room at the New Yorker Hotel, and I recently learned that after his presidency, Herbert Hoover lived at the Waldolf Astoria for 30 years.
I know people who have been living in rent stabilized apartments in NYC for decades who will never let them go, even though they no longer like the neighborhood or the unit.
Of course, it is hard to feel sorry for someone living in a $1,200/mo 1-bedroom in a nice area in Manhattan.
Right -- that's not a trap; it's a choice.
Harder than it used to be though.
https://www.wired.com/story/airbnb-ban-new-york-illegal-list...
There's some exceptions, USDA, VA, and FHA loans. All government programs. But it's tied to the property so only transferable to the purchaser. Very rare here even now with rates changing so much.
What does seem to happen often is that an owner who wants to move but doesn't want to lose their nice rate will move and then rent our their old place, or at least try to, it can be difficult to qualify for a new mortgage while carrying the old mortgage and not having a history of rent payments.
ARM, 5/1 may be assumable depending on terms.
Typically people refix after the term. My 5 year recently ended and my monthly cost increased as I’m now fixed at a higher rate for another 5 years - at 4.5%, although it’s still less %age of my wage than it was 5 years ago.
During the fixed term you can’t repay it without a penalty, but if you move house you can port the mortgage so it’s secured against the new house instead.
We got blown away by the pandemic that locked up the housing stock. So I cheated and built my own house for like 1/4 the cost it is on the market as it's almost all markup from the opportunity cost of losing the 0% loan.
For those that have lost hope seriously consider a prefab for like 60k dropped on some vacant land. Where I live you don't even need inspections or license to do it yourself. But you need to develop the land yourself, and not hire out a GC, because developers will always be chasing high margin luxury builds rather than the low margin methods I've discovered for economical housing.
Basically the poor have worse access to credit than other groups so when interest goes negative in real terms the poor pay for it.
For those of us here, that’s probably well within reason in most of the country where you can buy a house for <$600k
Sure the price of the houses has gone down, but higher interest rates mean my monthlies are higher than they were, which means I can't afford a house!
It's what most people would consider so, yes. It's an upper-middle-class area, clean and safe, if more than a little stuffy and uptight.
That's an understatement. It's consistently one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest (depending on the year) locations in the entire country.
It is, depending on the year, how you measure it, and what you consider "Upper East Side". That last part is important: the UES has three main subneighborhoods with very different demographics and characteristics. It's also adjacent to East Harlem, which is historically not wealthy and brings the mean/median down for any measure that includes part of it.
For example, here the Upper East Side is listed as the wealthiest neighborhood in the entire city, all five boroughs: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/6/27/15881706/nyc-richest-neighbo.... This is using household income, which is one measure. Alternate measures include median rent (skewed due to rent regulations), net worth, property values, etc.
Point is: calling the upper east side an "upper middle class" area is an understatement. If it's not a wealthy neighborhood, then nowhere is.
Yes. That's basically east of Central Park at the southern end of museum mile. So, generally, a very good (if somewhat sleepy) neighborhood.
“It has long been the most affluent neighborhood in New York City.”
“The Upper East Side maintains the highest pricing per square foot in the United States.”
“Four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP Code, 10021, is on the Upper East Side and generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.”
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_East_Side
Also it's a miserable part of the city to live in.
The building was an old one in the center of Manhattan, but newly renovated. I moved in in 2021, and I think everybody had moved in within the last 5 years. There were a bunch of young professionals that had graduated from NYU and such.
But this guy was the only one without the iPhone electronic lock on his door -- and good for him, the iPhone locks are a reason why I moved out of the building! (Unsurprisingly, the locks once malfunctioned and we were locked out of the building. Computers make everything work very poorly these days.)
Anyway, I chatted with him in the elevator, and once asked when he moved in. I believe he said 1989 -- anyway, it was like 3 decades.
He didn't look to be more than 40, so I guess he must have lived there as a child, and inherited the apartment.
Also, whenever I talked to him, he would say something super political without prompting, like "Adams is fucking slob, under Giuliani we had law and order" or something.
(Also, he was black, which may break your mental image a bit.)
A bit of an aside because it sounds like he really did live there full-time, but another reason why people in RS units wouldn't want an phone-enabled lock on their door is it possibly gives the landlord information on how often they come and go.
Some people who have units like that live somewhere else but just can't bring themselves to let the things go, so they use them as storage and go by once a week to check the mail.
On the bright side, it was a well-maintained building in a good neighborhood, so they had reasons to enjoy it being just the price.
About 1% of NYC apartments are rent controlled, about 50% are rent stabilized.
In controlled units you might see a minor increase over time, but generally you're paying what the unit was priced at 50 years ago. Leaving typically means an increase in rent of 500-700%, and these are practically impossible for new tenants to get.
In stablized units the rent can only be increased by a percentage determined by a board, typically 2-3% a year.
That's not true.
Stabilized units can increase something like 4% a year, up until they hit the threshold that takes them out of stabilization.
Controlled units can increase 2% every two years and historically did not do so from the 90s until a few years ago where increases have been happening and the housing board has advocated on behalf of landlords for additional/emergency increases.
Rent increases can happen completely separate from this process through building improvements and from the late 80s through to the early 2000s, my landlord managed to add $700 onto our controlled rent through really shady/shoddy/fake building improvements.
Growing up about 80% of the units in the building were rent-controlled and when I left there was was only 1 controlled unit left after mine. Nobody in my family, even though they all still live in NYC, wanted to take over the apartment.
Most controlled apartment renters die and have nobody eligible to take them over (an immediate family member has to cohabitate for like 2 years with the renter). The number remaining across all of NYC is exceedingly small, like under 15000. There are ~4 million housing units in NYC. Rent-controlled apartments are true unicorns. But close to 75% are stabilized.
They would do shit like slap a coat of primer on the hallways and add $50/mo in permanent rent to everyone's bill (90 unit building).
> my landlord managed to add $700 onto our controlled rent through really shady/shoddy/fake building improvements
Ugh, your story is not uncommon sadly.
Rent Guidelines change every year. They've typically been 2% or lower. Due to high inflation, the latest increase is 3.0%. [1]
There is no longer High-rent or High-income rent decontrol since 2019. Individual Apartment Improvements and Major Capital Improvement now provide a much smaller basis for rent increases and/or are temporary. [2]
[1] https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uplo...
[2] https://hcr.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/08/rent-laws-...
To have rent control you have to have been in your apartment since before 1970. Capital improvements are how rent-controlled apartments had their rents jacked up between then and now. The majority of decontrol happened before any changes made in 2019.
The suggestion made before was that rent-controlled apartments were locked into the prices people paid 50 years ago and that's not remotely true. Also the number of rent-controlled apartments remaining in NYC is practically insignificant.
It's at the very least remotely true, if exaggerated
> [The median monthly rent for unregulated units is] $1,845
> The median monthly rent is about $1,400 for rent-stabilized units
> [The median monthly rent for rent-controlled units is] around $858
https://archive.is/wB1yN
The OP was unclear, controlled units are certainly not "locked into" any price. To your point:
> rent control operates under the Maximum Base Rent (MBR) system. A maximum base rent is established for each apartment and adjusted every two years to reflect changes in operating costs. Owners [...] are entitled to raise rents the [..] the average of the five most recent Rent Guidelines Board annual rent increases for one year renewal leases [...] until they reach the MBR
https://hcr.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2022/09/fact-sheet...
Owners are so anxious to get tenants out (so they can start the gouging) that they offer tenants in controlled units buyouts to leave.
> In general, a buyout could range from $20,000 to $60,000
https://www.singhranilaw.com/post/understanding-and-negotiat...
The landlord put giant holes in my floor to get access to some pipes and wouldn't fix them for over a year.
After leaving the landlord tried to bill tens of thousands of dollars to bring the apartment up to their current standards -- even though we'd been in there since 1970 and the landlord never spent a cent on modernizing the apartment along the way. 100% of the renovations and upgrades we did ourselves. The apartment was left in great condition.
I completely agree with you that it's a trap. The place made me completely miserable and even though at the end I finally earned decent money to leave, I chose to leave the city entirely.
Best decision of my life.
> landlord tried to bill tens of thousands of dollars to bring the apartment up to their current standards
> landlord never spent a cent on modernizing the apartment along the way
Surely you see that these are directly connected. With an increasing cost of living and a legally fixed profitability per month that isn't going up over time nor keeping up with inflation, from the landlord's perspective, there's little to no incentive for them to fork over cash they never got from the apartment to put back into it. At that point the only incentive is to hold onto the property itself and wait for its value to increase while deducting depreciation, and perversely, they are incentivized to make you as uncomfortable as possible since they cannot raise the rent on the unit until you move.
It's my opinion that if we want rent control, there should be a cap on the amount of time that ends sooner than "on death", especially if you're not old. (For old people who are basically living in the last unit of their lives, it makes sense to me to rent-control those).
Sure and we also stayed and maintained the building and the landlord's property through the 70s and 80s when New York was a cess pit. My neighborhood was famous for petty crime and was full of pimps, street hookers, bums and scammers -- New York was half empty compared to now.
My landlord still had their property because of tenants like us who stayed when life in NY was grim. I was just around the corner from a building famous for the landlord trying to burn the tenants out (The Windermere).
Also what the landlord was doing by not completing the repair was illegal. Fineable. Slumlordish. Having a 2' round, 1' deep hole in the doorway of my bathroom floor is a massive safety issue. You're saying my landlord shouldn't be required to repair it because of incentive? If I fell in their hole and hit my head on the toilet and died, they would have a multi-million dollar liability on their hands.
I'm saying the landlord shouldn't be expected to lose money on a unit. That's really not a drastic thing to expect, unless you are an entitled child who simply expects things to be given to them.
You were living in a rent-controlled apartment and your non-rent-controlled neighbors were likely paying double, triple or more what you were paying. Your expectation of even more beyond the privilege of living in an area that you should have been paying many times more for, is astonishing to me. You have CLEARLY never owned any kind of property, either to live in or rent out. That means there's this entire segment of reality that you have zero exposure to which is tainting your worldview with falsities about what owning property is like.
This reminds me of a story a lawyer friend told me about one of her coworkers. They all work for a nonprofit but this one coworker demanded to be paid more, based on nothing. Complete unrealism. shrug.gif
One day you should try buying any property at all, and try renting it out at cost while also still doing all the paperwork and having to eat the bills that continue to flow (such as mortgage) even when it's vacant. Then, also spend tons of time going to court to attend to frivolous lawsuits made by slightly-crazy tenants.
I understand this may make the neighbours feel jealous, but hey, I'm jealous of my neighbour who bought his house for 1/3rd of what I paid for mine... Life's not fair.
Nope.
i think it would be interesting to see more places lean into this. personally, I would gladly give up my apartment's kitchen in exchange for a staffed central building kitchen
the chefs there are probably better cooks than me anyway
I think some of the older ones had shared kitchens, more like a dorm setup.
I'd dare say most people are better off eating from such a cafeteria for 80-90% of their meals, so long as they have the option 10-20% of the time to go out and get something different to switch things up.
It is my understanding, especially in New York, that it was not uncommon for people to have residency in hotels in the early 1900s. I've always found that a bit interesting. Even today, I know there are some condos you can buy in upscale hotels, where you have access to the amenities, such as the restaurant, laundry, and cleaning services.
Nope. It's stuff like:
Lack of space. Think how much smaller your hotel room is compared to an apartment. You want to buy your own TV, with a sound system, and do an Arduino project? No space.
Poor sound proofing: Lots of noise from neighbors.
No kitchen: It's fine if you're gone for a few days, but if you're in one for a month, you likely will need to cook something. Most people can't afford to eat out all the time (and it's not healthy to do so).
I recall once while in school, there was a new fancy apartment complex being built that students had signed a lease for. Unfortunately, there were delays so the company set them up in a hotel for 2 months till the apartment was ready. These are all the complaints those students had about the hotel experience. Nice in the beginning, but not a good long term solution.
When I visit the US I am always struck by how much stuff people own there, and a lot of that is kitchen stuff specifically. But most of the world -- including many other developed countries -- make do with less and don't necessarily even think about it.
You don't need a large variety of spices, and spices are compact as heck.
If you're going to cook, you can buy same-day or even a few days' worth of food.
It may surprise you to learn that most people want a quality of life exceeding that of a hobo.
Do you really think it's near impossible to endure hotel room or compact apartment living living unless you can absolutely have the tools and space of a full-blown suburban kitchen in there? Comments like these truly remind me of how removed a certain subset is from how billions of people can live comfortably for years on end by improvising modestly.
Similar to another example comment I saw by someone on this site who really thought that it was just impossible to make coffee at home unless he had a full-blown espresso/capuchino machine of the kind some commercial cafe might use.
It also helps if you know you'll be back in your house in a month or even two--and you're fine with just not doing some activities/hobbies while you travel.
[1] https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/hotels/il/chicago/westmo...
[2] https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/mspeihw-homewood-suites-edi...
[3] https://signaturemgmgrand.mgmresorts.com/en/hotel/one-bedroo...
Oh and of course the folks still had to pay their rent those months. It seems like a nice deal because the monthly rates for those rooms are a lot more than the rent they paid but in reality they're getting less than what they paid for.
It's not like these were a Holiday Inn or something!
The difference with modern hotel residences is that they tend to have a full kitchen etc, and be more of a condo building with a hotel at the bottom (usually).
My trips were always the Sunday night out, Thursday night home type, where probably the biggest issue is the disorientation. One Courtyard Marriott looks just like another, even across countries. Rental cars quickly lose any excitement. Stuck in some suburban office park with your choice of Chilibees or Ruby Garden? You can see where nutrition quickly drops to zero if you aren't really cognizant. And then there's the relationship part. If I'd been single it might have been awesome, but I had little kids at home and it was a tough few years for what in hindsight was limited financial and career gain. Glad we live in an era where more of the work can be done remotely.
I do prefer to be home. But let’s not deny that going to a high end hotel in a top tier city is glamorous.
If the breakfast is expensive but you get it for free, it’s going to be a very nice experience
Space considerations aside, the worst part is the noise. From hearing people next door due to thin walls, to people stomping around above you, to housekeepers letting each and every door they open slam shut, and more, the best takeaway I had was that if I rented an apartment and it was noisy, escaping to a hotel would not be the right solution.
However, I will 100% recommend booking a hotel over using a vacation rental website (I'm not going to name names to stem aby free advertising).
I’ve lived in apartment hotels for 1-2 months at a time for the past 6 month and it can be quite addictive coming home to a well made bed.
Learning to make your own bed like that couldn't take more than a few hours... Treat yourself.
Not to mention self-cleaning bathroom.
I avoid hotels and almost always rent an apartment.
Time difference, doctor/dental visits, mail, family, and work life balance are brutal.
Getting a call when your partner totals a car, and ends up having one of their worst days, and just needs a physical person to see and comfort them really makes it seem pointless. Life happens and its hard enough when you're able to return home everyday.
"The remains of more than one million people are buried on Hart Island, though since the first decade of the 21st century, there are fewer than 1,500 burials a year. Burials on Hart Island include individuals who were not claimed by their families or did not have private funerals; the homeless and the indigent; and mass burials of disease victims."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hart+Island/
This story becomes way less interesting, and way more common (NYC), once that info is understood.