Rich New Yorkers are scoring the city’s best rent deals.

A new analysis by the Wall Street Journal of the city’s 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey — the most recent data available — found that some of the sweetest deals in the five boroughs’ rent-stabilization program are landing in the laps of its wealthiest tenants, not its neediest.

Right now, wealthy households make up about 10% of the entire rent-stabilized stock, according to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis of 2023 data. Of those, more than 86,700 households reported earning above $200,000 a year.

High earners in the top 25% bracket who live in rent-stabilized apartments pay roughly $1,000 less per month than they would at market rate, a savings of 33%. 

Top earners in the 10% bracket do even better, pocketing $1,300 in monthly savings, a 36% discount. Compare that to renters in the bottom three income brackets, who save closer to $300 a month, or between 15% and 22%.

Part of the disparity comes down to geography. Wealthier tenants tend to cluster in pricier neighborhoods, where the gap between market rate and stabilized rent is naturally wider, even if the stabilized rate still comes with a hefty price tag.

“You do have people paying $5,000, $6,000 or $8,000 for rent-stabilized apartments,” Allia Mohamed, CEO of the rental data firm Openigloo, told the Journal. 

The rest of the gap is baked into the system itself. Rent stabilization in New York was never designed to check a tenant’s bank account.

“I can’t imagine trying to do an income certification for like a million units,” Brad Greenburg, executive director of NYU’s Furman Center, added. “Administratively, it feels impossible.”

Those well-off tenants are about to get an even better deal, courtesy of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze, which kicks in this October.

The borough breakdown shows just how uneven the savings really are. In Manhattan, stabilized units go for about half of what market rate would charge. In The Bronx, that discount shrinks to just 12%. Queens renters save 13%, while Brooklyn tenants land in the middle with a 24% break.

Not everyone in the real estate world is shrugging this off as a quirk of the market. Some see it as proof the whole system needs an overhaul.

“This shows you the system is malfunctioning,” Massimo D’Angelo, a real estate attorney who represents private landlords, told the outlet. “We need to give these apartments to people who actually need them.”

Tenant advocates see it differently. To them, a handful of wealthy outliers in a housing stock of 1 million units is no reason to panic, and definitely not a reason to shrink the program.

“This isn’t a welfare program. That’s not what rent stabilization is. We’re not looking out for just the most needy,” Darius Khalil Gordon, executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, said. “It’s made to make sure that people can afford to live in a city that they love.”

Rent stabilization is often mistaken for rent control, but the two are not the same. Rent-controlled units have their prices capped by the state, while stabilized apartments fall under the watch of the Rent Guidelines Board, a city panel that decides how much landlords are allowed to raise rents annually.

Most rent-stabilized tenants are far from wealthy, and the bulk of these apartments sit in The Bronx and Washington Heights, with additional pockets in Brooklyn and Queens.

Still, with a million units scattered across the city, economists say it was only a matter of time before some of that inventory ended up benefiting high earners too.

In neighborhoods like Midtown East, a two-bedroom now averages around $7,500 a month, up 17% from last year according to Zumper, a jump that has made stabilized apartments feel less like a bonus and more like a necessity for anyone hoping to stay in the city long term.

To qualify as rent-stabilized, a building generally has to have been constructed before 1974, when the law took effect, or it must receive some form of public subsidy or tax break. Mamdani made expanding that pool a campaign promise, vowing to add 200,000 new stabilized units over the next 10 years.

There was once a mechanism to catch these cases. If a tenant’s income hit $200,000 for two consecutive years, landlords could convert the unit to market rate. They could also raise rents after a tenant moved out, provided they made qualifying renovations.

Landlords used those tools often. Since 1994, more than 360,000 apartments have exited the rent-stabilization program altogether, according to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board.

That changed in 2019, when the state clamped down hard on those loopholes, a decision the real estate industry has been fighting to reverse ever since.

“There are no current annual income certification reviews,” D’Angelo said. “That needs to be changed.”