$55 A Month in Rent? It’s Possible

• March 19, 2012
• 0 Comments

by Shilpi Paul

Tom Combs’ apartment building.
Courtesy of the New York Post.

If you are fed up with the rent that you are paying, do not read this article.

Due to rent control and some forgotten paperwork, one Manhattanite is paying just $55.01 a month for a New York City apartment, reported the New York Post this weekend.

Thomas Lombardi, who is in his 70’s, lives in the same one-bedroom in SoHo that he grew up in. His rent has not gone up in decades, and neither has that of his neighbor, 87-year old Tom Combs, who pays $71.23 a month. To put the low rent in perspective, comparable units in the area rent for about $2,500 a month. While New York does have some rent-controlled units priced well below market rate, Lombardi’s rent is highly unusual; the average monthly rate for a rent-controlled apartment in the city is $800.

According to the Post, landlords are allowed to raise the rent on rent-controlled units by 7.5 percent per year until it reaches the “maximum base rent.” It turns out that Lombardi’s landlord, who bought the building last year, never filed paperwork that would have allowed him to raise the rent.

This deal far surpasses anything we’ve heard about before, including the winning rent from our Sweetest Rent in DC Contest. We thought our winner George Krebs, who pays $600 for a Cathedral Heights three-bedroom, was pretty lucky; it turns out, we didn’t know how good it could get.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/55_a_month_in_rent_its_possible/5301

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