Hi! I’m hoping you can advise on an issue my friend is facing. He’s been in his Brooklyn apartment for six years and the building's new owner recently sent him a lease renewal with a 15% rent increase. He requested the unit’s rent history from the city, and it says it was deregulated in 2014 under the basis of “high rent / high income.” But the last regulated tenant (his old landlord's father, he tells me) was listed as paying $775 in 2013, and I don’t see any way his daughter got (legitimate) approval to rent it at $2500 with the moderate renovations she did in 2013/2014 after he died. (My friend moved in two years later, and has never paid that much.) I also don’t believe she had a tenant in there making $200k.
What would you advise, given that a) it’s been 8 years since the suspicious deregulation, and b) the building now has a new owner? My friend can’t afford the (outrageous) 15% increase, but also can’t afford to move right now.
(For what it’s worth, the new owner sent him his renewal 2.5 months before the end of his current lease — my understanding is that they needed to give him 3 months notice to try to raise it more than 5%.)