Rent Stabilized Buyouts Explained: What NYC Tenants Lost

Steven Weinstock (00:00) This is The Wealth Clock, and I am Steven Weinstock. My guest today has a piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal. Here we are, October 20th, 2026. He wrote an article, not in preparation for this interview, because we did schedule this a while ago, but I happened to find out about it today as I was prepping this interview. and his headline is that tighter rent control robs New York. Tenants, New York City tenants. He sells apartment buildings in New York City about a hundred deals a year with his team. And he says that the 2019 rent laws, which we'll get into, wiped out something like a hundred and billion dollars of tenant wealth. Tenant wealth, not landlord wealth, tenant wealth. We'll get into that. And I want to know exactly what he means, how that number holds up. what it means for anyone who wants to own a building in New York. My guest is Seth Glasser. He is senior managing director at Marcus & Millichap and part of the New York Multifamily Group. He is also, like I said, the author of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published just today. Actually, I think it was yesterday in the online edition and today in the print edition. Seth Glasser (01:22) That's right. Steven Weinstock (01:22) And it's called Tighter Rent Control Robs New York Tenants. He started with Marcus & Millichap in 2009. At one point, he was rookie of the year. And he even made the Commercial Observer's 30 Under 30 list. I met him in June when he was moderating the New York real estate panel at the very popular ReDeal Summit. I happened to be the MC of the event that day. And he also co-hosts. His own show, his own podcast, the New York City Multifamily Podcast. I'm gonna ask him some questions about that. Before we start, I want to say thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed. Thank you to everyone who sends me feedback. You are why the show keeps growing. If you get something out of this conversation, hit subscribe right now so you do not miss the next one. And welcome to the show, Seth. Congratulations on the Wall Street Journal article. Seth Glasser (03:00) Yeah, the timing between the two of us is really amazing. There that was not planned at all, obviously. but yeah, I'm happy to talk about, you know, the article or, you know, really whatever you like. I'm I'm all ears. But obviously, you caught me in a good mood today 'cause the Wall Street Journal picked up my op ed. You know, I've been I've been sending them, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, a bunch of op eds and, you know, articles that I you know, some of them I later publish on our own just website and people can see but this one I I spent some extra time on like really thinking pretty thoughtfully about the messaging and stuff like that and I was thrilled when they took it. I didn't I didn't believe it, you know, we communicated back and forth for like about a week just like with some edits and you know their thoughts and you know, they they had some minor like revisions, like you know, they're they're their true writers, not me. So I listened to their advice. Steven Weinstock (03:53) So this is Seth Glasser (03:54) But yeah, it was really it was really a cool moment for me, frankly. Steven Weinstock (03:57) This is the first time one of your articles got picked up in the Wall Street Journal? Okay, wow. Seth Glasser (04:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been quoted like, you know, by a bunch of their reporters and journalists and stuff about, you know, the New York City housing market and rent regulation. And I've sat down with, you know, a a couple of them for coffee and done whatever phone interviews they wanted, just to really draw attention on the issue. You know, I'm sure we'll get into some of this about some of the struggles that we are having here in New York, specifically on the rent regulated stuff. But Yeah, it's great. I'm I'm really happy about it and I'm just happy to you know be a part of the the messaging and just speak the truth, you know. That that's all it is. Like I'm just speaking the truth. I'm trying to put more sunlight on the issues here and take trying to take the moral high ground. Steven Weinstock (04:49) So before we get into that, just a quick question, before we get into the details of the article, how has the reaction been, both personal and professional? I again, this is we're recording here at 2 15 PM Eastern Time. The online version came out yesterday, the print version came out today. I'm sure your phone is blowing up. how many print copies did you actually buy? Seth Glasser (05:14) So it's funny you said that. Like I don't I personally don't get the print copy of the journal. I only subscribe digitally. And so I had to I was talking to my brother-in-law who gets the hard copy mailed to his house and I said, like, you gotta save this one. I happen to not be in the city today, so finding a hard copy in suburban New Jersey is actually a little difficult. Like, I don't have just like a bodega on the street that just sells, you know, every, you know, periodical under the sun. So I asked a couple of people to pick up a a copy just to make sure I have a hard copy of it. Steven Weinstock (05:48) And you should that you should definitely get that laminated framed, whether it's in your office, maybe it goes in the background of your Zoom meetings, but definitely a nice memento. Wall Street Journal is top of the game and a copy that belongs under a magnet on your parents' refrigerator. Seth Glasser (06:07) my parents they're plotzing. the only yeah, exact it's it's awesome. It's cool. It's whatever, you're getting me raw. You're this is the raw reaction. Steven Weinstock (06:15) That's what I want. That's what I want. Okay, so I read the article. let's talk about taking away equity from tenants. Explain that to me. before we get into that, we have legislators and politicians who constantly make it hard to be a good and profitable landlord here in New York. Everything that they do the claim is that it's for the tenants and not for the landlord. Tell me what you mean how tenants lost equity because of what's happening. Seth Glasser (06:50) Yeah. The the whole point of the article is to highlight the tenants. Like the narrative, you know, to institute change, it can't be about the landlord. It can't be about the real estate industry. You can't be a landlord and you know say, my building's underwater, I can't afford to renovate the apartment. Like, you're just gonna like speak into the void. Nobody cares. That's the reality. It's been seven years since HSTPA. Nobody cares. So how do you change it? And the different approaches just make it about the tenants. the tenant the rent is at an all-time high, the tenants are suffering, like no one has any money to reinvest into the apartments. So the tenants have inferior units. There's 57,000 vacant rent-stabilized apartments because the laws prohibit, you know, any type of reasonable mathematical reinvestment strategy from happening. So, you know, this is just You know, this is a r the a real part of the business. Like this doesn't happen anymore, these buyouts. But you know, the article was about buyouts. And it's kinda like this underground economy that people don't talk about publicly. Steven Weinstock (08:00) So tell me t tell tell me, tell my audience, what does a buyout mean when you say buyout? Do we have a tenant, they're in an apartment for a long time, what kind of equity can they have? What does a buy out actually mean? Seth Glasser (08:13) Sure. Yeah, it it's basically cash for keys. So this was specifically for rent stabilized apartments where the rent as a rent stabilized apartment is just naturally below the market rent. So that spread between the current legal rent at let's say $1,000 versus the market rent of $4,000 was worth something to the landlord. So the and the only way for them to capitalize on that was to vacate the apartment. And as a rent stabilized tenant, like you have a life lease effectively. Like, as long as you're not subleasing, dealing drugs, not paying the rent, it's basically it was basically impossible to get evicted. It still is impossible. Nothing's changed from 2019 till today. If you're a rent-stabilized tenant, you pay the rent, and you're not a criminal, like you can stay as long as you want. So, but in 2019 prior to June of 2019, you were able to Raise the rent from let's say $1,000 to the market rent of $4,000, and that was worth something to the landlord. So there was this economy basically built in the spread. And the greater the spread, the greater the buyout. So, you know, if the mark if the tenant was paying a thousand but the market rent was two thousand, that would be worth something kind of small, maybe ten thousand, twenty thousand, whatever. Like that was just an agreement between two people, landlord and tenant. If the rent was $1,000 but the market rent was $20,000, right? You're in the West Village and you have a rent stabilized three bedroom for a thousand bucks, you literally, you could probably get a million dollars for that, right? If you just extrapolate the value on there. and that was that equity is now gone, right? That that cash for keys trade from the tenant's perspective doesn't exist anymore because The landlords are no longer allowed to raise the rent. So if that unit for a thousand dollars vacates, whether it's in the West Village or the Bronx, the rent stays the same. It's still a thousand dollars for the next tenant. So you as the landlord have no incentive to write the tenant a check in exchange for giving up the keys and the rights to that apartment. So that you know, if you read the article, I I basically explain it or frame it as like a retirement account. That's basically what these, you know, buyout. Equity positions were, you know, it wasn't something that could be papered. You couldn't look online and see how your portfolio was doing in like a traditional investment sense, but like that spread existed. And as the rents rose in New York, so did the equity position. Right? So that all got wiped away. That it literally all went to zero. And in my article, I said I think I said, you know, imagine if your stock portfolio went to zero in one day. Cause that's basically what what happened. Like all these people's equity positions, whether they were big or small, they went to zero. And that was a real thing. And I think it's a really underappreciated and and definitely under talked about aspect of the real estate business in New York that significantly impacted Steven Weinstock (11:15) Yeah. Seth Glasser (11:18) negatively the tenants in these buildings. And and I'm really talking about like impacting. You know, not people that are on the upper echelon of the income, you know, barometer, but like these are like vulnerable rent-stabilized tenants, the people that the politicians are all out like talking about protecting the people that are most impacted by inflation, rising rents, cost of living, like all this stuff that like you as a human being like can empathize with. Like the rent is too damn high in New York. Like, I don't know anyone that doesn't agree with that, landlords included. I think I think the people that collect the highest rents would also agree. Like, hey man, this is crazy. Like I can't believe that I'm getting this rent. Like it's a lot of money. So all these tenants had these equity positions. And yeah, like there are retirement accounts, savings accounts, you know, down payments for houses in Florida, the Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, whatever they wanted to use the money for, it's gone. And it's just, it's sad. It's just, it's just sad. Steven Weinstock (12:20) It's amazing how we have these new laws and rules that come about. And, you know, the people making these rules are not necessarily in the business and therefore they don't foresee what something like this. You know, they're trying to help you know, a certain segment of the population by keeping the rent down, not realizing that they're screwing a large segment of the population. on the other side. And these are people that were relying on this. people who were banking on it. People waiting it out and, you know, trying to make the money. And, you know, it's capitalism. So you had landlords who were happy to pay these buyouts in order for them to, you know, rent out the unit, put some money into the unit and get a higher rent. So it it's really a bad rule you know, all over. say what you want about rent stabilized or not. it created this I don't want to say underground, but this undermarket equity play for tenants. And you know, landlords are always seeking a profit, which is fine. And they found a way to come up with this buyout industry and it worked. And it worked for everybody. And the and the buildings traded you know, on values based on some of those rules. let's back up a little. How'd you get into real estate? Where are you from? you know, what was your first job? You know, tell me a little about your background. Seth Glasser (13:46) Yeah, sure. I I grew up in Long Island. my parents run a veterinary hospital in Astoria, Queens. I used to work for my dad on Saturdays. and then, you know, I went to school for you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. You know, I was the one of the main reasons why I didn't become a veterinarian is because I'm allergic to cats. So so Steven Weinstock (14:07) Yeah. Seth Glasser (14:08) that it was kind of like all right, you're you're not taking over the family business. Like figure it out, figure something else out for yourself. but no, I graduated college in 2009 like like a completely lost, you know, 21 year old, like you know, any normal kid who doesn't know what they want to do, right? They're just more interested in like hanging out with their friends, playing basketball and and having a good time and just, you know, going looking at the world wide eyed. so yeah, that my I mean that was like back in high school I worked For my dad. but I was always like kind of hustling. Like I had a snow shoveling business back in like high school. what did I do? I worked at a kosher deli as the delivery boy. You know, I was making like 30, 40 bucks in cash, a little beer money for the weekends type stuff. Like I was just I had an internship after college. Remember, this is the summer of 2009 I graduated. So this was like the doldrums of the economy. He like, it was like, Go get a job making nothing, which is ultimately what I decided to do as a broker. You don't get paid anything, you figure it out on your own. Or you go back to school to be a lawyer or an accountant. And I just had no interest in that. so I've been at the at Marcus & Millichap since two thousand nine. Same seat, doing the same thing, rinse and repeat, you know, f whatever slogan you want to say, but it's been it's been good. You know, obviously there's hard times, hard days, but you know, generally I like it. You know, it's I get to do stuff like this. meet a lot of people, advise clients. it's exciting. Every deal is different, you know, e every problem, every deal has a different problem that you have to solve for, whether it's like a building related problem or a person related problem, right? Like the you know, buyer seller, attorney, whatever. so it's fun and it's interesting and You know, the laws in New York, it's just crazy, you know. It makes the job and it's mostly frustrating and infuriating, but at the same time, it keeps it interesting. It's hard. It weeds out the competition. And you don't learn. Like, unless it's hard, you don't learn. Like, you don't learn when you w in a victory. You learn on the losses or the challenges. And that's kind of how I'm just like approaching Where we are in the cycle right now, like the values are down like I mean, it's something like seventy-five percent or something like that since the peak seven or eight years ago. but let's go onwards and upwards. Steven Weinstock (16:38) yeah. we have a new mayor here in New York. the mayor at this point I think he's only been in office about nine months, but it's it feels like years and years. he promised lots of rent freezes and you know protections for tenants. His rent freeze took effect just a few weeks ago on about a million apartments here in New York. In your opinion, who feels it? Owners, lenders, buyers, tenants? Seth Glasser (17:10) I mean, literally everyone is imp literally impacted by this stuff. The owners obviously are not happy about this because everyone gets an increase in their in their you know CPI adjusted income. I forgot who said who put this out there, but like, you know, Mamdani himself, like the first thing he did was he voted himself like a 17% raise. Like like day one, like everyone gets a raise. You know, banks are feeling this, all their loans are underwater. Even the loans post-HSTPA made during COVID on rent-stabilized buildings, every single one of those is underwater. Like, unless you got dead at like 20,000 a door, like every single one of those is basically underwater, which is like kind of crazy to think about. Like property values fell 30% from HSTPA. You had a boatload of transactions during COVID at like depressed valuations. And now five years later the loans are due and they're all underwater. So it's just like it's just kind of crazy. The tenants, I guess, in the short term, if you're a rent stabilized tenant, you're probably happy, right? Like, you know, guy just froze your rent. Like, I guess that's cool. Like, that's that's helpful. But like long term, what what did they sacrifice? They they sacrificed, you know, they got short term gain for long term pain. And that was really what my article was about was Talking about the rent freeze, and you know, they got the rent freeze, that's great, but they just lost all their equity in their apartment. You know, though these things happened at two different times, obviously, but like we're talking about the same issue here that's overlapping. You know, HSTPA was, you know, Mamdani was in like middle school or something like that w when that happened. So he didn't have anything to do with it. But yeah, look, the the rent's frozen, so I guess that's good for them, but If you like, would you would you rather ha pay like a two percent increase in your rent, like an extra twenty bucks a month? Like a predictable two percent rent increase every year. Like that is like the ultimate form of stability, right? Whether it goes up one percent, two percent, or three percent, like that's you know, a normal person should be able to figure that out or manage that or like accept that level of predictability. Okay, so now you got the frozen rent, but your equity in your unit is gone. Steven Weinstock (19:37) Yeah, yeah. Seth Glasser (19:38) so it's really what to me what's sad is that the politicians that are advocating for these policies and and and courting voters to support these policies are either A not not equipped to give this type of advice Because they don't know anything. They're policymakers. They're not real estate professionals. They're not economists. They're not they're making policy that impacts like millions of people, but they don't know anything about it. So I don't think that's right. And I think it's partially evil, actually. I think they're they're preying on people's ineptitude or inexperience or just you know, unknowingness about like How this works. Like a lot of these tenants, like frankly, didn't even know that they had this equity in their apartment. You know, and that's maybe part could be part of the solution where, you know, maybe if this, if we end up like doing some type of rental reform where, you know, what I suggest in the article is like a California vacancy reset. Like just how they do it in California. Like we don't have to make any drastic change. And it's not complicated. Like when the tenant leaves, the rent gets reset to market, but the next tenant gets a rent stabilized lease. So however long they want to stay, they can stay. There's you know, they're agreeing to pay whatever the market value is at that time. Presumably it's a renovated apartment. If it's not a renovated apartment, it'll be reflective in the rent, but it's market. And then if you get the apartment, you stay there as long as you want. You want to stay forever, stay forever. And then you'll those increases are tied to the RGB increases. But then when you leave, that next tenant gets the same benefits as the previous tenant and they can stay, but the rent gets reset to market. Like if you just did that. All the property values would go up significantly. You'd have literally tens of thousands of permits pulled pulled effectively overnight to rent the 57,000 vacant apartments. You would drastically increase the supply. So all the market rent apartments would come down. You know, those keep hitting high watermarks. And yet here we are, seven years later, there's 57,000 vacant apartments and counting. Like, what are we doing? This is not complicated. That's that's the frustrating part, is it's not complicated. And why I wrote the article the way that I did, specifically about how this impacts tenants, is because it's not about the landlords. Meaning, the policy makers are making these decisions and implementing these decisions. it's not about the tenants, excuse me. It can't be about the tenants. Meaning, I'm I'm saying something that's conflicting. If they were concerned about the tenants, These policies wouldn't exist. If they were concerned about the tenants, these policies wouldn't exist. So it can't be about the tenants. So they're clearly going after something. And it's to me, the way I read it, is just this oppress, oppressor, victimhood type of mindset and power struggle. And that's what it's about. You know, you hear Cea Weaver talk about white supremacy and you know, housing is a what does she say it? Not a privilege, but Steven Weinstock (22:51) All right. Seth Glasser (22:52) a right you know, like it's just it doesn't have to be like this. That's like the maddening part about it. Like nobody wins. Right now, everybody is losing, and it's just infuriating. I think I I stand with the entire real estate industry from owners to supers to porters to architects to tenants waiting in line around the corner to rent a East Village apartment for five thousand dollars and there's thirty people in front of them. And like you have to have you have to make a half a million dollars a year, otherwise you're not gonna get it. It's like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Steven Weinstock (23:29) Yeah, I agree with you and there's a lot of people out there who are trying to wonder why this is happening and they're trying to come up with solutions and a lot of people have good ideas. you mentioned the California reset. Definitely a good idea, or a good idea on top of other bad ideas. even the the buyout, you know. I guess it's a good idea to give them rent stabilized, it creates this economy of equity. But the people in charge are not necessarily specifically looking out for the little guy. They're definitely not looking out for the big guy. You know, the landlords, you know, the evil landlords. But the proof is in the pudding that they're not necessarily looking out for the little guy either. And I say that. Because you have a lot of people, like you said, the housing what was her name? Cea Weaver. Cea Seth Glasser (24:25) See a weaver, yeah. Steven Weinstock (24:26) Weaver, her and a lot of people who are loud in the news, whether it's politicians across the country, people who are going you viral, you know, politicians who are going viral. There's a lot of people out there who don't think the concept of landlord and tenant should exist. So, you know, you're coming at it, you know. as a k as a capitalist tenant equity If you don't believe a landlord should exist and everything should be nationalized and you know, housing is a right and not a privilege, all these rules I Seth Glasser (25:03) Mm. Steven Weinstock (25:04) I guess make sense because they're not looking for the owners and the landlords to be happy. They're not looking for it to make sense in what me Seth Glasser (25:13) Yeah. Steven Weinstock (25:13) and you think makes sense. So it it's very Seth Glasser (25:15) Yeah. Steven Weinstock (25:16) it's very hard to, you know, try to come down to their level. And try to make it make sense. it's Seth Glasser (25:23) But I wanna let's think about it from their perspective, right? Like pretend you're 25 years old, you just graduated from college, you got two hundred thousand dollars in debt, you can't get a job, maybe you get a job for sixty grand, and the rent is twenty five hundred bucks for your share. And you're like, what? Like, and the taxes are in New York City are like thirty-five percent or whatever at your income level. And the only thing you've seen. In your adult life, if you're 25 years old, is Donald Trump. Because this started with Trump. I just want to go like if you go back, this whole thing here started with Trump when he was elected in 2016. The whole city council changed in 2018 as a result of that. You got de Blasio, you got the whole progressive movement movement in 2018. The real estate industry was completely asleep at the wheel. Nobody saw this coming. We were given three days' notice and boom, Cuomo signed it. No changes in June of 2019. So I'm just saying, like, if you're 25, and I don't agree with this mindset, but I just want to have some sympathy here and like take the other side of the argument for conversational purposes. If you're 25, the only thing you've known is Donald Trump and you don't like anything that he says no matter what. Fine. The rent is ridiculous. You can't get a job. AI is taking over the world. And inflation is eating away any type of savings ability. And you're just like afraid of your shadow. What do you do? Capitalism does not work for that person from their perspective. So I am sympathetic to that person's situation, and I can see why it's appealing to vote for someone who says, freeze the rent. The rent's too high, free bikes, free buses, free groceries, you know, whatever. Promise this, promise that. It's it's kinda like the the class president in middle school that says everyone gets free ice cream. Like, sounds great, sounds great, you know, like But you know, look, this is a ver this is just a math problem. It's just simple supply and demand. Argentina got rid of rent regulation a couple of years ago, the rents plummeted. In the Sunbelt cities during COVID, the expansion, everyone moved down to the Sunbelt and the Southwest, the rents went crazy. A couple years later, even now, all the landlords down there are struggling because the rents are dropping precipitously. So it's not like this is an unsolvable problem here. we just gotta you know, have some adults in the room to figure out how to do it. And right now, helping the landlords or talking about any type of policy reform that could be perceived as helping the real estate industry is just politically untouchable. Like no one tou like they're not they're not gonna mention it. Like there's no shot. So whatever. I'm rambling, but that's kind of my assessment. Steven Weinstock (28:29) Yeah, no, it's it it it's a great hot take. you're not rambling, you're you're you know, you're saying things that maybe can't are not gonna change, but you're definitely making sense. it reminds me, you say about Trump, twenty sixteen. I was at a real estate conference in I wanna say it was pre-twenty nineteen. And there was a New York City councilman, his name is David Greenfield. a Democrat, but you know, pretty moderate. And he was, you know, on the land and zoning committee, you know, dealt with a lot of real estate people, a lot of real estate owners. And he got up, he got up to speak by one of these events. And he said, and he warned us, I you know, so now that I'm I'm saying it, it it might have been in 2018, right when AOC was elected. And Seth Glasser (29:15) Yep. Steven Weinstock (29:15) he and he basically said like this, he said that The whole country is, you know, they voted for Trump, and you're gonna have the opposition to Trump so so fierce. Seth Glasser (29:26) Yep. Yep. Steven Weinstock (29:28) And what they're gonna do is they're just gonna go in their strongholds, take over over there where they have the votes, you know, not in parts of Oklahoma, but in pockets of New York City, where they could with you know twenty-six thousand votes, get a very vocal anti Trump, charismatic and make rules that really affect so many more people than their district. Hey look, this is correct. Correct. Seth Glasser (29:55) Yeah, they're doing it legally. This is the crazy part. This is all kosher. It's all kosher. It's all look, this whole thing, it's like a it's like a perfect storm. Like you had Trump and then you had the reaction to Trump with De Blasio and AOC and you know, then I mean y now you look back and Qatar has invested billions of dollars in our higher education. You had everything with October seventh and then everything on October 8th and onwards, and it's like all these people are protesting on October 8th. Like what is happening? Like what? this is not It's not a coincidence. Like the whole October 7th and onward protests and the freeze the rent campaign, these are the same people. And it's the same issue. It's oppressor and victim, and it it there's a real overlap here that is very clear to me. And it's a societal shift. Like the uneasiness and the political instability leads to rising anti-Semitism, socialism. It's not good. It's not good. So We got some work to do. Steven Weinstock (31:01) yeah. Okay. Wow. This interview started out so nice and now I'm very depressed talking to you. Seth Glasser (31:05) Why? This is this come on. Steven Weinstock (31:09) tell me some things you're optimistic about in New York City real estate. Seth Glasser (31:15) okay. Well, I think if if you actually walk around the city, it feels really good. Like I don't know like how much time you spent like just like literally walking around, like going to coffee shops, whatever, nice Satur Sunday afternoon, whatever. Like it's really nice. Like it's pleasant. lots of nice bars and restaurants and like people still want to be here. Like, you know, despite all this, you didn't have, you know, look, you have like the Ken Griffins of the world, like You know, writing a check for three billion dollars to Florida and not New York. Like you're gonna have that. but by and large, like you have really intelligent people here that make up the workforce. Like, this is still the epicenter, you know, in the financial capital of the country. So, and all this stuff is cyclical. You know, the rent laws will change. I'm really optimistic about it. Like, that's why I'm still doing this. Because eventually they're gonna change. What they look like and when they change, nobody knows. Like, who knows? But look, we're we're still selling a lot of real estate. Like, we have people that want to buy this stuff, they still believe in it. Whether it's they're buying, you know, market rate apartments because they want to improve them and put money back into the buildings and the rent's still going up and the city's improving, or they're buying regulated buildings at the dip and You don't buy a rent stabilized building in New York that's a hundred years old that requires a gazillion dollars of CapEx unless you fundamentally believe that something will change. And that's there isn't a buyer out there of rent stabilized buildings that's buying these things that says like, no, I don't think anything's gonna change, like this is just what it is. No one says that. Steven Weinstock (32:54) If someone is listening and he wants to buy their first apartment building in New York, what should they look out for? Seth Glasser (33:04) I mean, God, it's it's it's what's the average rent, the paperwork on the deregulated apartments. I mean, it's really you want to make sure you figure out how you can get screwed first before you figure out like the opportunity. I do that's kind of like a neurotic New York point of view, but that is what you know most people kind of think about and look at look for. so the regul the stabilized Stabilized buildings, you need higher rents. Like buildings that have that are fully stabilized with low rents, those like it's almost like you can't even put a loan on because you're just never you're you're gonna strangle yourself with debt. So I would look be looking at the condition of the property, the the facade, the roof, the boiler, and go through your all your inspections and make sure that You know, if you're not buying something where a bunch of money has been spent in the last couple of years, you are getting the building at a price that r is reflective of the the additional equity that you have to pet come out of pocket for in order to bring the property up to code. I would be cautious of future compliance. So just because the You know, local law one through a hundred is here today doesn't mean you're not gonna have a hundred and one, hundred and two, and a hundred and three by the time the year's out. You know what I mean? So you kind of do have to have a little foresight as to where you think you know, the compliance is going. But I do think that look, people were buying stabilized buildings before 2019 at like fifteen times the rent. I mean, this is kind of how I think about it. Like, I think if you found value in buying buildings at fifteen times the rent. Pre-HSTPA and you found value at ten times the rent during COVID, you should be able to find value today at four times the rent. Despite the challenges, despite the rent freeze, despite Mamdani, despite the rhetoric, despite seven percent interest rates, despite you know, collection loss and you know, housing court, like I think there's real value here today. And I think this is probably, you know, one of the greatest opportunities the market has ever had. Like I don't think anybody actually wants this, but if you kind of think about the glass being half full versus half empty, this is arguably the greatest opportunity we've ever had. From a real Steven Weinstock (35:27) People. Seth Glasser (35:27) estate investor mindset. Steven Weinstock (35:30) People are fearful, so now's a good time to buy. Warren Buffett says that. And a lot of people are fearful about real estate in general, especially in New York. Seth, talk to me about your podcast. How'd you start? What's it about? How do we listen to it? Seth Glasser (35:45) Yeah, sure. So New York City Multifamily Podcast available on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple. we're up to how many episodes have we done? I think we're at like eighty or something like that. I don't know. I lost track. But we try to pump out an episode like every other week or something like that. But you know, the guests they vr they really vary. Like we're we're open to to anyone, but it's basically anything New York City multifamily related. Like we wanna have someone come on the show and talk about some of the issues. So I won't release who the who the next one is because that's those are ready to record it, it'll get released next week, but that'll be a good one. the last one was me and my three partners just doing like a market update. So we'll do one of those like every quarter. We'll chat for 30 minutes about like what's happening in the market, just brokers like listening talk brokers brokering each other and like talking about the market and like and you could just listen in. previous guests have included buyers, sellers. I had a guy who runs a DST fund come on there. Cause I mean, the ideas that I have for the podcast basically just pop into my head from conversations like this or with a client. It's like this flywheel of like, you know, I'll talk to a client, for example, and they'll say, like, hey, I want to sell my building. I don't want to do a 1031 into a another building or triple net. I want to buy a D into a DST. And they'll s like multiple people will have said that to I'm like, you what? Like, I know what a DST is, but I don't really know how it works. So why don't I go find a guy who knows how to what a DST is and let's bring him on the podcast. And now when somebody talks to me about DSTs, I can go, boop, here you go, listen to this. And now they have their 45-minute education. so yeah, it's really I mean it's vast. I'm trying to think who else has come on. Attorneys have come on, the guy that's handling the vacancy reset. For the Institute for Justice, the the lawyer out in I think he's in Cleveland, if I remember correctly. But he's handling on behalf of Spony and f four or five of the plaintiffs that are suing the state for the vacancy reset. I had him on the podcast to talk about the case. so yeah, check it out. New York City Multifamily Podcast. there's always new episodes. I had Avi Schron on. A month or two ago, he was great. You know, we were talking about his background and stuff. And I try to make it kind of like the way I always explain it to people is like how I think about it, like sports radio, where it's like 75% information, 25% entertainment. And the entertainment is for the audience as well as the guests. Like I wanna have fun and I wanna learn, just myself personally. Like I do have some just selfishness in like wanting to do it for myself and like learn and better myself and just have a good time. And anyone that's come on is a guest, like the relationship between me and that person has like 10X. Because they enjoy it and yeah, try to it's good. Steven Weinstock (38:42) You you mentioned just to clean up over there, you mentioned DST. DST I believe is a Delaware statutory trust, did I get that right? it's an Seth Glasser (38:51) Yeah, it's like yeah. Steven Weinstock (38:52) old some sort of alternative to a ten thirty one where instead of locking it up into another building, you could buy shares in some sort of REIT type of I'm may y you do you tell me, where where am I wrong on that? Seth Glasser (39:07) Yeah, it's b it's basically like you're instead of buying instead of you Steve buy selling your building in New York and buying a CVS and only owning that one CVS, having all your eggs in one basket, you're basically giving your proceeds from the sale to like a fund manager, basically. And that you own let one percent of this fund and that fund might own one asset. It literally might own one asset, or it might own 20 assets. So you might own a little piece of a office tower in Chicago, a shopping center in Florida, whatever. And so you're kind of diversified. And there's good things and bad things about it. The nice thing is you are diversified. You are relieving yourself of some of like the personal responsibility of of managing your own money, right? It's kind of like your stock advisor in a way where they're just like They're babysitting it for you. The returns are basically the same. The downside of this is it's definitely not as liquid. You know, like if you wanted to sell your, you know, 1% of the DST for whatever reason, it's really hard to do that. Like, cause the fund is like a closed-end fund and they say, like, hey, like, we're not doing anything with this. You can't get out for X amount of years. But if you want to get out early, who's the buyer of your little 1%? It's only someone within the fund already. So you gotta discount that like crazy. So it it definitely hamstrings you, but look, some people really like it. it's it's a totally personal choice. Steven Weinstock (40:40) Seth, thank you very much. I had a great time. Tell me audience how they could reach out to you, where they could find you, website, email, whatever you got. Seth Glasser (40:48) Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I post a lot on LinkedIn. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn or my email Seth dot Glasser G L A S S E R at R E I I S dot com. And yeah, happy to talk. I'm not not going anywhere, so Steven Weinstock (41:06) Okay, and if you're interested in his article in the Wall Street Journal, do a search. W SJ. Sometimes you hit the paywall, sometimes you don't. Depends if you if you have the subscription. But it's a great article. You should be very proud that they published it, printed it. I'm sure you've been avoiding it around. And Seth Glasser (41:28) Yeah. Steven Weinstock (41:28) good luck. Good luck with that. Seth, it was great to have you on. I appreciate it. Seth Glasser (41:31) Yeah, thank thank you. Steven Weinstock (41:33) if this episode was good, subscribe. If it wasn't good, tell me why and I will try to make it better next time. I'm Steven Weinstock. Seth, have a great one. Seth Glasser (41:45) Thank you, Steven.