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Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?

city-journal.org · 1,330 words · saved by 1 readers

In New York City, making a profit on real estate has become increasingly difficult. Rent-stabilization laws built on the mantra that “housing is a human right,” a dysfunctional housing court, and myriad other interventions have driven thousands of units off the market, giving rise to the phenomenon of New York’s “ghost apartments.” The city now has nearly 50,000 empty units, absent from the market either because their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations. Recently, I visited four of these ghost apartments. Together, they reveal the city’s fundamentally broken housing market and what needs to be done to fix it. Finally, a reason to check your email. Sign up for our free newsletter today. In a city where 100 percent of people owned their homes, the housing stock would be in pretty good shape. Owners have an incentive to keep their properties in good order both because they live in them and because they want to increase the value of their ass

Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant? Adam Lehodey Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant? The emergence of "ghost apartments" reveals a fundamentally broken housing market. / Politics and Law , Economy, Finance, and Budgets , States and Cities December 17, 2025 / Share Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images / Eye on the News / Politics and Law , Economy, Finance, and Budgets , States and Cities Dec 17 2025 / Share In New York City, making a profit on real estate has become increasingly difficult. Rent-stabilization laws built on the mantra that "housing is a human right," a d

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