It is likely the case that a good many New York City residents aren’t exactly sure what the status of their leased apartment is or how to find accurate information concerning that important matter.

And it is important, obviously, given the complex and frenetic nature of the metro’s vast housing market, especially regarding rent-regulated units.

There are many of those. Indeed, a recent New York Times article that serves as a primer on NYC renters’ legal rights notes that “roughly one million rent-regulated apartments make up the largest portion of affordable housing in the city.”

Such referenced affordability can be adversely altered in a moment by a city landlord looking for and subsequently exploiting loopholes that enable a regulated unit to be removed from protection against materially jacked-up lease amounts. The payoff can be significant — in a quite literal sense — for a tenant who is duly knowledgeable about his or her unit’s status and how to require a would-be bad-faith landlord to act lawfully.

A number of important points immediately emerge when it comes to self-education concerning the NYC rent-regulated housing market. The foremost initial thing for any tenant to know is whether a unit is in fact regulated, with either rent-controlled or rent-stabilized status. Most residents in regulated status live in units designated as the latter. The Times notes that rental history can be obtained from the Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

Myriad other questions and concerns might reasonably be best directed to a pro-tenants’ law firm whose attorneys routinely provide strong advocacy to renters across the entirety of issues and challenges they face.