A rent controlled apartment has become available down the hall...

It goes to market when a RC lease ends -- but as a newly RS lease. I think if market is >$2K/month, it goes directly to permanent market-rate, though not sure.

dream on

reminds me of the days when we used to scan the obits for apartments.

Reminds me of a macabre conversation I had with a couple of co-workers a few years ago. A producer friend of mine was telling us this awful story about how he came home the prior evening to find his building besieged by NYPD, FDNY, and paramedics. The man in the apartment above him had died of a drug overdose. We all fell silent. Then the senior producer piped up: "So ... will you be turning your place into a duplex?"

Only in New York!

peple on this board has no sympathy what so ever on the passing of an old lady, but want to get the apartment. interesting.... Only in New York!

Jess, a high school friend of mine, was practically hated out of her coop for these two published sentences:

"(She had her neighbor committed to Bellevue a few months ago after he started smashing windows, playing loud music and ranting. "Having your neighbor committed's the new thing to do in New York real estate," she mused.)"

http://www.observer.com/node/43650

She never did manage to expand into his space, sadly.

Hey, it's not just us. A friend in university housing (at an unnamed Ivy League institution in Manhattan) told me about a guy who had a better offer from Princeton, including a colonial house. The unnamed institution counteroffered, and he stayed. Then they knocked on the door of this guy's neighbor and told him, "We're taking one of your bedrooms and adding it to the apartment next door."

the post is... oh what's the word.. icky?

hejira, I'm sorry that you are skeeved about shoving the dame in her coffin fast enough so you can get a cheaper crib. If it is any consolation (to yourself of course!) please realize that most landlords will not allow a lateral move. Think about it. If you moved, they'd have to prep the "new" plcae down the hall and then prep the apartment you would be leaving. Then most likely in this current market LOWER the rent on the place you just left. More likely they might do enough capital improvements on the reently deceased's apartment so they can try to justify market rents. Therefore they have no incentive to let you move across the hall for cheaper.

Look... I think this situation can open a whole can of worms about the "appropriate" reaction to the passing of an old neighbor. Murder? Horrifying. Young child dying? Tragic. A friend dying? Horrendous. But an old (80+) woman I've never met dying at home (presumably of natural causes) in familiar surroundings? Eh. I think we should all be so lucky when our time comes! Sure, it must be sad for her family (assuming she had family), but quite honestly I don't feel like I should be expected to feel some faux sense of sadness. If that makes me cold, then yes, I am cold. The fact is that after her affairs are straightened out and the unit has been renovated, it will be on the market. And perhaps there is a chance that it may still be regulated. What can I say? NYC has hardened my heart...

There are no rules in Manhattan real estate - it's like check-in at an Italian airport.