纽约市长佐兰·曼达尼的租金冻结政策于10月1日生效，覆盖约100万套租金稳定公寓。租户被告知他们赢了。我靠出售这些建筑谋生，而这场庆祝正掩盖着某些事实：冻结他们租金的同一套制度，已经从他们的资产负债表上抹去了一项资产，而几乎没有人注意到。
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze took effect Oct. 1 on roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments. Tenants are being told they won. I sell these buildings for a living, and the celebration is papering over something: The same regime that froze their rent already took an asset off their balance sheet, and almost nobody noticed.
2019年6月之前，支付远低于市场价租金的租金稳定租户实际上持有其公寓的净值。业界对此有个名称：买断。
Before June 2019, a rent-stabilized tenant paying well below market effectively held equity in his apartment. The business had a name for it: the buyout.
一名租户每月支付1200美元租住一套在公开市场上可租到4000美元的公寓，实际上坐拥一笔差价。这笔差价对房东来说是有价值的，因为房东可以翻新、重新出租，并最终将该单位移出监管范围。于是房东会付钱让租户搬走。现金换钥匙。我听说过买断金额从1万美元到100万美元不等。
A tenant paying $1,200 for an apartment that would fetch $4,000 in an open market was sitting on a spread. That spread was worth money to the landlord, who could renovate, re-rent and eventually move the unit out of regulation. So the owner paid the tenant to leave. Cash for keys. I’ve heard of buyouts running anywhere from $10,000 to $1 million.
想象一位住在六楼无电梯老楼的80岁寡妇，她自1995年以来每月只付1000美元租住这套公寓，如今她已无法承受爬楼梯。她所拥有的，是一个在她周边社区被绅士化改造的低于市场价的租住权。对许多纽约工薪阶层来说，这几乎是他们曾经拥有过的最接近退休账户的东西。它曾用于支付医疗费用，或购买佛罗里达或波多黎各的房屋。
Think about an 80-year-old widow on the sixth floor of a walk-up, paying $1,000 a month for an apartment she has held since 1995, whose stairs she can no longer manage. What she had was a below-market tenancy in a neighborhood that gentrified around her. For many working-class New Yorkers, that was the closest thing to a retirement account they ever held. It paid for medical bills or a house in Florida or Puerto Rico.
2019年的《住房稳定与租户保护法》一夜之间将这种净值归零。想象一下你的股票投资组合在一天内归零。
The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 wiped that equity to zero overnight. Imagine your stock portfolio going to zero in one day.
该法律并未禁止买断。它只是剥夺了房东支付买断的每一个理由。空置去管制——已取消。空置奖金——已取消。收回翻新成本的能力——实际上已不存在。如今，租户搬走的公寓仍然冻结在同一封顶租金上，而房东需要投入7.5万美元进行翻修，却无法收回这些成本。因此，纽约市目前有5.7万套空置的租金稳定公寓，且数量仍在增加。
The law didn’t ban buyouts. It removed every reason an owner has to pay one. Vacancy decontrol—gone. The vacancy bonus—gone. The ability to recover renovation costs—effectively gone. An apartment a tenant vacates today stays frozen at the same capped rent, now needing $75,000 of work the owner can’t recoup. Hence the city’s 57,000 vacant rent-stabilized apartments and counting.
算一下。假设低于市场价的租约在2019年之前平均拥有10万美元的买断价值，远低于曼哈顿和布鲁克林棕石房所能获得的价格，但高于布朗克斯。在大约一百万套公寓中，这相当于租户财富总计1000亿美元，在一次立法会议期间被彻底抹去。
Run the arithmetic. Assume the average below-market tenancy carried $100,000 of buyout value before 2019, well beneath what Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn commanded, and above the Bronx. Across roughly one million apartments, that is $100 billion of tenant wealth, extinguished in a single legislative session.
我们已经花了七年时间讨论这项法律对房产价值造成的影响——下跌了75%。那么，为什么政客们忽视这项本应帮助纽约工薪阶层的法律反而让他们破产了呢？买断是纽约住房领域最进步的财富转移机制。它将资金从房产所有者转移到长期居住、比例失衡的老年人和低收入租户手中——完全自愿，且未动用一分钱的公共补贴。想继续住下去的租户就留了下来；想套现的租户，可以这么做。
We have spent seven years discussing what the law did to property values, a 75% collapse. So why are politicians ignoring that the law meant to help working-class New Yorkers bankrupted them? The buyout was the most progressive wealth-transfer mechanism in New York housing. It moved money from property owners to long-tenured, disproportionately elderly, low-income tenants—voluntarily, without a dollar of public subsidy. A tenant who wanted to stay, stayed. A tenant who wanted to cash out, could.
那么，这项法律到底在帮助谁？不是租户——他们被承诺租金冻结，却为了这一点放弃了六位数的资产。不是房东——他们背负债务，资不抵债。也不是下一任租户，因为需要花7.5万美元翻新的公寓如今空置着。
So who is this law helping? Not the tenant, who was promised frozen rents and gave up a six-figure asset in exchange. Not the owner, who is underwater on debt. Not the next tenant, because the apartment that needs $75,000 of work sits empty.
有一个办法可以解决这个问题，且对租户和纳税人毫无成本：加州的空置重置机制。租户获得受保护的租金稳定租约。当他搬走时，房东在完成新装修后将租金重置为市场价，新租户同样享有与前租户相同的保护。批评者会说这会制造驱逐租户的动机。这是事实，但另一种选择就是我们现在的局面：建筑物日益破败，没人愿意维修，以及越来越多可能具备可负担性却空置的公寓。没有任何企业能靠2026年的支出和1995年的收入来运作。
There is a fix that would cost tenants and taxpayers nothing: California’s vacancy reset. A tenant gets a rent-stabilized lease and its protections. When he leaves, the landlord resets the rent to market value with new renovations, and the new tenant gets the same protections as the previous tenant. Critics will say this creates an incentive to evict. True, but the alternative is what we have now: decaying buildings, no reason to maintain them, and a growing stock of potentially affordable empty apartments. No business runs on 2026 expenses and 1995 income.
即便如今，受租金稳定保护的租户仍致电询问买断事宜。他们听到了残酷的真相：2019年6月，阿尔巴尼摧毁了他们一直寄望的“鸡蛋”。他们从未收到通知，从未被咨询，也从未被告知他们可能有什么东西会失去。相反，他们被告知租金被冻结了。他们赢了。这与事实相去甚远。
Rent-stabilized tenants still call asking for a buyout. They hear the hard truth: Albany destroyed the nest egg they were counting on in June 2019. They were never notified, never consulted, never told they had anything to lose. They were told, instead, that their rent was frozen. That they won. Nothing could be further from the truth.
格拉瑟先生是 Marcus & Millichap 的高级董事总经理，负责经纪纽约市公寓楼的买卖。他还是《纽约市多户住宅播客》的联合主持人。
Mr. Glasser is a senior managing director at Marcus & Millichap, where he brokers sales of New York City apartment buildings. He is a co-host of the “New York City Multifamily Podcast.”