Rent-stabilized buildings price off rent rolls, not comps. A buyer is purchasing the income stream, the regulatory headaches, and the long-term upside if units ever destabilize — not the open-market value of the apartments.
Since the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA), most paths to deregulation closed. That made many small rent-stabilized buildings worth significantly less to traditional buyers, and many institutional investors stopped buying them entirely.
There's still a market — investors who specialize in NYC stabilized housing understand the rules and underwrite realistically. They close all-cash, take the building as-is including any DHCR overcharge exposure, and don't require the owner to deliver vacant units.
If you've owned a small stabilized building for decades and the math no longer works, knowing what it would actually trade for today is the starting point.