Head over to the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village websites and you'll read that rents in the chaos-plagued East Side complexes start at $3,000 and $3,200 per month, respectively. That's a lot of money! The apartments must still be desirable if current property shot-caller CW Capital is keeping rents that high, which is why we are startled by The Real Deal's report that CW Capital plans on renovating Stuy Town's vacant apartments?all 570 of them. That's right, on an island where the vacancy rate is below 1%, Stuy Town's vacancy rate is over 5%. Ain't that a head-scratcher! So shouldn't CW Capital be dropping the rent to fill these empty apartments? The company has actually decided to go a different route: rent hikes!
These empties typically have rents of $900 per month, reflecting their longtime stabilized and un-renovated status. Since the units are still rent-stabilized, the landlord is allowed to jack up the rent a small percentage for "vacancy allowance," as well as 1/40th the renovation cost. Each apartment will increase an average of $2,100 per month, so these apartments must be getting solid gold doorhandles and platinum bathtubs, right? Not according to The Real Deal, which reports the renovations will be similar to how previous landlord Tishman Speyer fixed up the apartments. Though far from glamorous, the average renovation will supposedly come out to $84,210 per apartment. Wow, now those cleaning bills make a lot more sense!
· Hundreds of Stuy Town apartments to see rent increases averaging $2,100 [Real Deal]
· Stuy Town coverage [Curbed]
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