Q. I rent a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. The building used to be all rent-stabilized, but then some of the apartments, including mine, became market rate under the high-rent/high-income deregulation law. Recently, however, the landlord received a J-51 tax abatement, which requires all apartments to be rent-stabilized until December 2018. Is my now-stabilized rent based on the last stabilized rent for the apartment, or is it based on what I pay now?
A. David A. Kaminsky, a Manhattan lawyer who specializes in landlord-tenant law, says the issuance of a J-51 tax abatement generally requires that all units previously deregulated again be rent-stabilized. (The abatement is a temporary real estate tax credit granted by the city as an incentive for a landlord to do a building wide rehabilitation.) “The rent for letter writer’s unit is stabilized at the current rent,” Mr. Kaminsky said, “and future increases are based on that amount.”