The Landlord Lens - Mamdani Goes After Bad Landlords in NYC

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new Rental Ripoff Report lays out 23 actions aimed at cracking down on “bad landlords” after the city gathered testimony from more than 2,400 tenants across all five boroughs.The proposals range from faster inspections and stronger enforcement to recognizing tenant unions, increasing penalties, modernizing landlord registration, and even requiring disclosure of AI-altered rental listing photos.In this episode of Landlord Lens, John and Seamus break down what’s actually inside the Rental Ripoff Report, which reforms could benefit both tenants and responsible landlords, and which could create unintended consequences for New York City’s rental market.The bigger question: Can NYC solve its rental problems by going after bad landlords, or does fixing housing require addressing the economics of owning and maintaining rental properties too?

Throughout our first four months in office, City Hall held New York City's first ever rental rip-off hearings. October 1st, about 40% of all the units in New York City will have a complete rent-free. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Landlord Lens. Today we are going to discuss something you might have already heard about, and it came out of our favorite mayor's office. Maybe your favorite mayor. It's the rental rip-off report. The rental ripoff report. Let's roll a clip. Throughout our first four months in office,

City Hall held New York City's first ever rental ripoff hearings, forums where tenants could share their struggles, and ideas directly with those who have the power to deliver change. The rental ripoff report. Yes, John, it came from a bunch of hearings that were at the beginning of 2006, beginning of this year, and now we've got the report. It's been released. It's been released.

It has some interesting nuggets in there. 13% of tenant complaints include pests. Yeah, which makes sense. Yep. It is a tenant complaint after all. Yep. But it's really designed to produce a whole lot of new policy and action that Mayor Mamdani and his administration want to take. Yes.

And taken individually, they seem actually pretty small, but it's really the volume of policy proposals that are putting forward. It's things like, you know, we're going to look into heating problems. at an individual unit level and not a building level and things like that that feel very bureaucratic and relatively small. And I think there are two big things that have landlords rightfully, I think, on edge about this report. The first is the presentation and some of the rhetoric around it. And then the second is the fact that this is all on top of these rent freezes that are going

to start this October, I think October 1st, about 40% of all the units in, you know, New York City will have a complete rent freeze. That's right. Yeah, all of the ones that are already kind of regulated by the city are going to have a total rent freeze for an entire year. The rhetoric, though, is also, I think the stuff that has been getting a lot of headlines and we have hated to watch, but also it's hard not to laugh at some of it. I mean, John, you'd say hated to watch.

This Hill Life Daily Show, I feel like, or even SNL clip here. And I'm super excited to watch it with you, John. I found it hilarious. My landlord owns dozens of buildings, but he is not a steward of the public trust. In fact, it is the opposite. Since 2005, I survived three faulty eviction cases. I've lost three friends to eviction,

two of whom lived on my floor. And for the past year, a year and a half, our supportive housing neighbors have been dissuaded from joining our fledgling tenant union. John, I'm going to ask you, how many evictions have you survived so far? I've survived no evictions so far. None. None. Yeah, definitely not three.

It's honestly just really hard to take some of these things seriously when we talk about, you know, evictions and some of these policies in that way. And while we laugh, certainly some people do feel that way, right? We've long talked about this kind of visceral reaction people have to landlords, in part because of the portrayal, right? of them predatory, slum lords. And as you read through the rental riboff report, there are some things in there that definitely, I think, fall into that category. Sure.

Absolutely. The pasts, right? The mold, I think, was one that came out. There's a lot of untreated mold complaints. Yeah, absolutely. But to own property in a jurisdiction where you have this administration talking about being landlords the way they are,

even putting reports out, calling them the rental ripoff report, right? it's got to make you really, really uncomfortable to be a landlord. Yeah, super uncomfortable, and it probably also makes the valuation of the property you own in that city pretty rough to consider. How are you going to sell it in this kind of environment? Yeah, especially if you have like a small multi-family. Yeah, exactly, where it's kind of tailored for the folks that use TurboTenet, right? The two to four unit kind of small quad or whatever, that's going to be a lot harder to sell in this kind of city

because who wants to be in this environment and own property? Yeah, completely great. And one of the things that's interesting that I was looking at is there's some reports that have come out around how many vacant properties there actually are in New York because a lot of landlords out there. And I think this is happening more on the institutional side than independent landlords like our audience. But they're just opting not to rent them out because the repairs required are either too great

or the different restrictions on rent and they're just kind of in a weighted out period or you have a lot of examples of people moving back into their rentals. Interesting. Okay, so making it their primary kind of. Exactly. I mean, this is like a perfect example of destroying a market, right? Like you're making it extraordinarily hard

to bring the resource you have, the supply, the house you have to market. Yeah, absolutely. And so, John, we talked about, well, what do we tell our landlord audience to do, right? Yeah. And, you know, we talked a lot. We had a lot of ideas, a lot of back and forth.

But there was really one key message, right? Yeah. And it was get out. I mean, I honestly can't imagine owning property in New York City right now with the conversation. And the fact that it's not just one person, you know, the mayor who is up there speaking about this, he's done a great job, honestly, rallying his supporters. And he's pretty much turning an entire city against you. Yes, an entire city against you. I mean, an entire country to some extent,

the amount of prime time he's getting on national TV and national places. Like this is, it's hard to look at this and not think this is the beginning of something nationwide. Yeah. And it's very, it's very concerning. I think if you're a landlord, the fact that your private property and the rights that come with that is not necessarily going to be upheld, respected at all. I would absolutely rethink having a portfolio in New York City, especially if you have the ability to sell, like you have single family or maybe a duplex or something like that. I think people with multifamily, it's going to be really hard. Yes, absolutely.

It's going to be really tough. I also think something to point out here, or my favorite argument in response to something like this, is I don't think Mom Dani exists. I don't think Mom Dani gets elected with this message if we have been, if we had been. allowing the market to respond to the affordability crisis over the last 20 years. If there was enough building, if there was enough units added online to these high demand areas, New York is a great example of it, obviously. So San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, L.A., right? If there had been enough units online and rent had been moderated by that, would Mondani

exist? I don't think so. Yeah, I agree. And that's actually, you know, we always try to have kind of a positive note at the end of these. And so the positive note that I would have is for all the landlords out there in New York is sell. And there's other places to own real estate where rents have actually been in housing prices have been dipping. So now might not actually be a really good time to jump into that market. There's other places out there that still believe in letting that free market do its work.

And where you're not going to be looked at as an absolute pariah, right? and somebody that is practicing the violence of eviction to use some of their language. Well, I think that is very true. And we've got a lot of videos on markets that kind of fit this profile, right? Austin, Denver, where we live, has done a pretty good job building over the last two years. And it's impacted rent prices. So there's a lot of markets out there where your money can be much, I guess, less at peril than it would be in New York right now. Yeah, where your property is your property.

Are there any implications from what Mom Doni is doing out there that we haven't talked about that you want to bring up? Leave it in the comments, interest in your opinion. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.