Every June, a nine-member board most Brooklyn owners have never sat in on decides how much you're allowed to raise rent on every stabilized apartment you own for the coming year. That's the NYC Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), and its annual vote — not your operating costs, not the market, not a number a broker suggested — is the legal ceiling on renewal increases for rent-stabilized units citywide, Brooklyn included.
If you own a multifamily building in Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Bushwick, or Flatbush with even a handful of stabilized units, this year's guideline order directly determines your renewal rent roll. This guide explains how the RGB actually works, how the 2025–2026 guideline year applies to your leases, and how to apply the increase correctly — without guessing at a number that changes annually and expires the moment it's published.
What the Rent Guidelines Board actually does
The RGB is a NYC-specific body, distinct from the state agencies that otherwise run rent stabilization. It's worth keeping the roles straight, because owners frequently conflate them:
| Agency | What it does |
|---|---|
| NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), through DHCR | Administers rent stabilization statewide: registration, overcharge cases, IAI/MCI approvals, rent history records |
| NYC Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) | Votes annually on the maximum percentage increase for stabilized renewal leases in NYC only |
| NYC HPD | Enforces the housing maintenance code — violations, heat/hot water, registration of the building itself |
The RGB doesn't process your paperwork, approve your renovations, or hear overcharge complaints. Its entire function is the annual increase vote — everything downstream of that (registering the new legal rent, issuing the DHCR-form renewal, keeping records) still runs through DHCR and your own compliance process. For the full mechanics of stabilization beyond this annual vote, see our complete rent-stabilization guide.
How the annual guideline gets set
The RGB's process runs on a predictable annual cycle:
- Research and hearings (spring). RGB staff publish operating-cost studies — the Price Index of Operating Costs (PIOC), income and expense data, and other market indicators — and the board holds public hearings where owners and tenants can testify.
- Preliminary vote. The board votes on preliminary, proposed ranges for one-year and two-year renewals.
- Final vote (typically June). After further hearings, the board adopts final percentages for one-year and two-year renewal leases.
- Effective window (typically October 1 – September 30). The adopted percentages apply to leases that commence within that 12-month guideline year.
Two-year renewals almost always carry a higher percentage than one-year renewals, reflecting the longer commitment — but tenants choose the term, not you. Because this cycle repeats every year with new numbers driven by that year's cost data, the specific percentage from a prior guideline year tells you nothing about the current one. Always pull the current adopted order directly from the NYC Rent Guidelines Board's official site before issuing a renewal. We point you to that adopted order intentionally, rather than printing a number that would be wrong within a year.
How to apply the increase to a specific lease
Applying the guideline correctly takes more than knowing the percentage. Three things determine the actual dollar increase you can charge:
- Which lease term the tenant chooses. A tenant renewing has the right to pick a one-year or two-year term, and you apply whichever percentage corresponds to that choice — you cannot force a term on them to get a particular number.
- What base rent the percentage applies to. This is the legal regulated rent on file with DHCR. If your tenant is paying a preferential rent below the legal rent, post-HSTPA rules generally require you to keep the preferential terms and apply the guideline increase to the preferential amount, not the higher legal rent — for the life of that tenancy in most cases.
- When the renewal window opens. Owners must offer the renewal lease on the proper DHCR form within the required window before the current lease expires, and the percentage that applies is whichever guideline order is in effect for the date the new lease term begins.
Get any one of these wrong — wrong term, wrong base rent, or the wrong year's percentage — and you've created a rent overcharge, even without intending to. Because overcharge exposure carries treble-damages risk when found willful, this is not a place to eyeball the math.
What the RGB increase does — and doesn't — let you do
It does:
- Set the ceiling for a standard stabilized renewal, applied to the legal (or preferential) regulated rent.
- Apply uniformly across NYC — the same adopted percentages apply to a Bed-Stuy four-family and a Manhattan high-rise alike.
- Reset annually, with no carryover: last year's unused increase doesn't stack onto this year's.
It doesn't:
- Apply to free-market (non-stabilized) apartments — those increases are governed by lease terms and market conditions, not the RGB. See our companion piece on rent increase rules across regulated and market-rate units.
- Give you room to charge more because your insurance, fuel, or property tax bill went up — the guideline is a ceiling, not a starting point for negotiation.
- Apply to a vacant unit as an automatic bump. HSTPA eliminated the vacancy bonus in 2019 — a new tenant moving into a stabilized unit generally starts at the prior legal (or preferential) rent, not a market reset.
- Stack with IAI or MCI increases without separate, proper DHCR filings — those are distinct, capped mechanisms, not part of the annual guideline vote.
Why this matters more in Brooklyn than almost anywhere
Brooklyn's rental stock is disproportionately pre-1974 multifamily buildings — exactly the housing type stabilization was written to cover. That means the RGB's annual vote isn't a rounding error for Brooklyn owners; it's often the single biggest driver of year-over-year revenue on a stabilized building. A building with dozens of stabilized units, layered preferential rents, and staggered renewal dates has to track the correct percentage against the correct base rent, correctly timed, unit by unit, every month of the year — not once a year on a single date.
That operational complexity is exactly what we built rent-stabilization management around: tracking each unit's legal and preferential rent, timing renewals to the DHCR-required window, applying the current adopted RGB percentage correctly, and keeping the registration and renewal paper trail clean through AppFolio. Many of the buildings we manage also have government-subsidized tenancies layered on top of stabilization — Section 8, CityFHEPS, HASA — which adds another compliance thread (payment-standard verification, recertification timing) running alongside the RGB cycle. Both threads have to be managed correctly, and neither excuses the other.
Common mistakes owners make with RGB increases
- Using last year's percentage. The guideline changes every year — a number from a prior cycle is not valid for this year's renewals.
- Applying the increase to the legal rent when a preferential rent is in place. Post-HSTPA, this is one of the fastest ways to create an overcharge.
- Assuming a vacancy resets the rent. It generally doesn't — the vacancy bonus is gone.
- Missing the renewal-offer window. Offering the renewal late, or on the wrong form, creates its own compliance exposure independent of the percentage itself.
- Quoting a specific dollar or percentage figure from memory. Always verify against the current adopted RGB order and the unit's DHCR rent history before issuing a lease — not from what you remember, and not from this article a year from now.
Bring in help if the tracking gets away from you
A handful of stabilized units with clean histories is manageable with a spreadsheet and a calendar reminder. A multifamily portfolio with layered preferential rents, staggered renewal dates, and subsidy tenancies mixed in is a different problem — and it's the exact problem Yak Management was built to solve. We manage buildings from two units up to roughly sixty units across Brooklyn and greater NYC, with rent-stabilized and subsidized housing as our core specialty rather than an afterthought.
If you want a clear-eyed read on where your renewals stand this guideline year — legal rents, preferential terms, and what's actually owed — schedule a property consultation or call 718-568-9278. We'll walk your rent roll with you and tell you honestly what needs attention.
This article is general information, not legal advice. RGB percentages and effective dates change annually — always confirm the current adopted order with the NYC Rent Guidelines Board and the applicable unit's rent history with DHCR before issuing any renewal, and consult a qualified New York attorney for guidance on your specific situation.