NYC Speculation Watch List: Rent-Regulated Building Sales

From April 2018 through December 2025, HPD evaluated 1,720 sales of mostly rent-regulated apartment buildings and 797 of them (46%) are on its Speculation Watch List today. A sale lands on the list when the price is high compared with the building's income: its capitalization rate is below the median for its borough. Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx each account for between 222 and 232 listed sales; Queens has 108 and Staten Island 4.

How a building gets on the list

Local Law 7 of 2018 requires HPD to review certain sales of rent-regulated buildings every quarter. Under HPD's rules (28 RCNY Chapter 52), a sale counts as a qualified transaction if the building is a multiple dwelling where a majority of units are rent regulated, it is either all-residential with 11 or more units or has 7 or more units plus a commercial space, it sold for more than $10,000 on a single tax lot, and the buyer or seller was not a government agency (or an HDFC as buyer). Buildings providing supervised affordable housing or with certain tax exemptions are excluded.

HPD then computes each sale's capitalization rate: the Department of Finance's estimate of net operating income divided by the sale price. The borough capitalization rate is the median of all qualified sales in that borough over the four most recent fiscal quarters. A sale with a cap rate below its borough rate goes on the list. HPD's rule notice explains the reasoning: a low cap rate suggests the buyer paid more than the building's income supports, which HPD says indicates a greater potential for tenant harassment as a buyer tries to recoup the price by raising rents. The list flags a price pattern. It is not a finding that any owner has harassed tenants.

Local Law 7 says HPD may prioritize listed buildings for its preservation programs or refer them for enforcement of housing laws. HPD updates both datasets every quarter. The files used here were last updated in May 2026 and run through sales recorded in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Sales by quarter

Volume swings with the sales market. The busiest years were 2018 (304 qualified sales in three quarters), 2021 (253) and 2022 (250). Activity dropped to 158 in 2023 and 157 in 2024, then rose to 217 in 2025. When HPD adopted its rules it expected about 150 buildings a year to be added. Actual listings were 150 in 2018, then between 60 (2020) and 143 (2021) a year since, and 95 in 2025.

Because the cutoff is a median, you would expect close to half of sales to fall below it, and that is roughly what the data shows: the listed share ranges from 36% (2019) to 57% (2021). The share is not exactly 50% because the median is taken over a rolling four-quarter window, per borough, while each sale is listed in its own quarter.

Cap rates have roughly doubled since 2018

The median cap rate across all qualified sales rose from 3.4% in 2018 to 7.8% in 2025. A higher cap rate means buyers paid less per dollar of the income the Department of Finance estimates for the building. The data does not say why, but the borough cutoffs moved with it: in the fourth quarter of 2025 they were 8.1% in the Bronx, 7.6% in Manhattan, 7.4% in Brooklyn and 6.7% in Queens. Since the list compares each sale with its own borough's recent median, a building can make the list in 2025 with a cap rate that would have been far above the cutoff in 2018.

Listed sales sit well below the cutoff. Across all years, the median listed sale had a cap rate of 3.7%, compared with 6.7% for sales that were not listed. The median listed sale was 0.9 pts below its borough rate overall and 1.1 pts below in 2025. Listed buildings also sold for more: a median of $6.0M versus $4.2M for unlisted sales.

Where listed buildings are

Manhattan (232), Brooklyn (231) and the Bronx (222) are nearly tied. Brooklyn has the highest listed share (49% of its 472 qualified sales). In 2025 the Bronx had the most qualified sales by far (96, versus 39 in Manhattan), with 39 listed.

Manhattan CD 12 has 82 listed sales out of 148 qualified sales, the most of any district, followed by Bronx CD 7 (53) and Manhattan CD 3 (44). Counts are sales, not distinct buildings: a building sold twice can appear twice.

Borough comparison

What the data can and cannot tell you

If your building is on the list

Being on the list is not a finding against your landlord, but it is a reason to watch how the new owner treats the building. Look up your address on Roofy's NYC building lookup to see violations, complaints and recent sales, and read what happens when your building is sold. If a new owner starts pressuring tenants to leave, see tenant harassment in NYC and starting a tenant association. To find out who is behind an LLC buyer, use our ownership guide.