My roommates and I are in the beginning of the second year of our two year lease.
A couple weeks ago, a tenant of 6 years on my floor in a similar unit caught up with me and told me to check my rent history because, he said, many units are RS in this building. He told me he is paying 2,000. I am paying 3,000.
I obtained my rent history and the last couple years look like this:
--2014--RS--Legal Regulated Rent: $1250--Preferential Rent: $1070
--2015--RS--LRR: $1285--PR: $1102
--2016--VA--LRR: $1285
The specific date for the 2016 rent ($1285) is also 25 days AFTER we moved in. We signed a two year lease for $3000. THERE WAS NO RIDER OR DOCUMENT ABOUT RENT STABILIZATION. No mention of RS, and certainly no document regarding how they came to $3,000.
I called DHCR and on their end, our unit appears to still be RS, however, the owner has not reported the rent for the past year.
Since there was a vacancy, 1285 + (.2 x 1285) = 1542 for the 20% vacancy increase.
Now, there was a decent amount of renovation done here. But even if there was $40,000 worth of renovations, which is highly doubtful, that still puts our rent at $2542 accounting for 1/40th the costs of IAI.
This does not appear to be a J-51 building.
Something seems off here, but I've only been truly researching this topic for a couple days so I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Any ideas on how to proceed?
Thank you.