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Housing & Real Estate

Housing & Real Estate in New York

The rent guidelines fights, the rezonings, the big deals, and the buildings going up or falling apart. The slow-moving stuff that decides your lease, your block, and your neighborhood five years out.

Desks we analyze here: The Real Deal, Brownstoner, 6sqft.

The coverage, newest first

26 stories
  1. July 12, 2026 Nine Hidden Injuries at the Pfizer Building The city's paperwork on its biggest office conversion undercounted the workers it hurt by threefold. Manhattan
  2. July 12, 2026 Washington Lets a Housing Lifeline Expire Congress set aside the money to save it; HUD is spending it on a few extra months instead. Citywide
  3. July 11, 2026 The Pfizer Tower Near-Collapse A landmark office tower buckled mid-conversion this week, and the mayor's housing plan runs straight through buildings just like it. Citywide
  4. July 10, 2026 Next Stop, Fast Buses, Better Service Six minutes back on your commute, and the free part of "fast and free" pushed to some other day. Brooklyn
  5. July 10, 2026 The Pfizer Tower Near-Collapse The beams were bending like cigarettes, and the paperwork shows the warnings were there a year before anyone evacuated. Manhattan
  6. July 10, 2026 The Upper East Side Legionnaires' Cluster Thirty-six cases in three ZIP codes, and the city still can't say which cooling tower did it. Manhattan
  7. July 9, 2026 The Contractor Behind 235 East 42nd Three years before two columns buckled, a union was already protesting the subcontractor's record of fatalities and wage theft. Citywide
  8. July 8, 2026 The Midtown Collapse Scare The city's largest office-to-residential conversion nearly fell from the inside out, and The City Reporter found that officials had known about the... Manhattan
  9. July 2, 2026 The 485-x Loophole That Swallowed 538 Affordable Apartments A state tax break meant to spur affordable housing has become a precise manual for building less of it.
  10. July 2, 2026 NYCHA's Paperwork Failure Is Putting Hundreds on the Street A scanning backlog inside the housing authority wiped out Section 8 subsidies for tenants who did nothing wrong, and the private firms managing their...
  11. June 30, 2026 Monitor Point Clears City Council, 1,324 Apartments Coming to Greenpoint Waterfront Council Member Restler spent five years saying no, then said yes at the last possible moment.
  12. June 30, 2026 Independent Commission Recommends 18.2% Pay Raise for NYC Elected Officials Officials who said they did not want a raise got larger numbers than they had asked for, published on election day.
  13. June 29, 2026 NYC Rent Freeze, 0% for Stabilized Apartments The board froze rents on roughly 1 million apartments, and the one person who voted no says the math only works if the city acts next to control what...
  14. June 29, 2026 Monitor Point Approval, Greenpoint Waterfront The City Council committee approved 1,324 apartments on MTA-owned land, half affordable, including 110 for formerly homeless New Yorkers, after five...
  15. June 29, 2026 CityFHEPS Budget Fight Stalls NYC Budget Mamdani campaigned on expanding the city's rental voucher program, then continued his predecessor's lawsuit against it, and now the fight is holding...
  16. June 28, 2026 NYC rent freeze approved 7-1, unprecedented for two-year leases A million rent-stabilized apartments are covered through September 2027. Landlords are already talking litigation. And the progressive Albany wave...
  17. June 27, 2026 The Historic NYC Rent Freeze Seven Mamdani appointees voted to hold 1 million rents flat at El Museo del Barrio on Thursday night, and landlord groups were already calling their...
  18. June 27, 2026 Monitor Point Rezoning Clears Committee in Greenpoint After five years of Lincoln Restler saying no, Gotham hit 50 percent affordable and 662 subsidized apartments are now heading to the Greenpoint...
  19. June 26, 2026 Mamdani Sweeps the Primaries and Reshapes the City's Power Map The mayor endorsed three congressional candidates. All three won. The organization is already looking at 2028.
  20. June 25, 2026 Mamdani's Congressional Sweep A year after taking City Hall, the mayor's machine ousted two sitting members of Congress and a borough president from his own party, and the general...
  21. June 25, 2026 DSA Reshuffles Albany's Assembly Down-Ballot A dozen state legislative seats flipped in Brooklyn and Queens, clearing the path for housing and transit bills that Albany has blocked for years.
  22. June 25, 2026 Rent Guidelines Board Votes Tonight One million leases. Six Mamdani appointees. A hearing in East Harlem. The mayor's most specific campaign promise gets a binding vote tonight.
  23. June 23, 2026 Mamdani turns his coalition on Congress The mayor bet his movement could move votes uptown and across the river. Tuesday night, most of the bet paid.
  24. June 23, 2026 A teenager dies in Central Park, and a banned bill comes back An 18-year-old came to see New York, the horse bolted, and a fight the Council buried in November is suddenly alive.
  25. June 23, 2026 The shelter next door, and the audit that never came Two Brooklyn neighborhoods are suing to stop a shelter, and the man who was supposed to watch the spending is now running for Congress.
  26. Saturday, June 20, 2026 Rent Guidelines Board freezes rent-stabilized leases at 0% The board that sets the rent for two million New Yorkers blinked, and a year of organizing ran into one vote.

Start here

Explainer How rent stabilization actually works About one million apartments have their rent increases set by a nine-member board every June. Here is the machinery, straight from the documents that run it. Explainer How NYC property taxes work Four classes, two assessment ratios, caps on top of caps. The strangest property tax system in America, explained from the statute and the city's own math. Explainer How NYCHA actually works One in sixteen New Yorkers lives in NYCHA housing, and the repair bill runs to nearly $80 billion. Here is who runs it, who is watching it, and how the buildings got this bad, from the documents. Explainer How to appeal your NYC property tax assessment If you think the city over-assessed your building, there is a real, free, first-stop appeal before you ever see a courtroom, and the whole window is open for only a few weeks each winter. Explainer What is ULURP, the way New York City reviews land use Rezone a block, sell city land, or site a new facility, and you enter ULURP: a fixed, public, months-long ladder of hearings that the Charter lays out step by step.

Housing & Real Estate, explained

The questions New Yorkers actually ask.

What is rent stabilization, and is my apartment covered?

Rent stabilization caps how much your rent can rise each year, a figure the city’s Rent Guidelines Board sets every June, and it gives you the right to renew. Roughly a million NYC apartments are covered, mostly in buildings of six or more units built before 1974. Your lease and the state’s rent registry can tell you if yours qualifies.

Why is it so hard to build housing in New York?

Because every project runs a gauntlet: zoning, the city’s ULURP land-use review, the local Council member’s effective veto, and usually a separate Albany fight over a tax break. Each step is a place a building can die, which is why "we need more housing" and "nothing ever gets built" are somehow both true.

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