upgrading into a bigger rental

Why would they jack up the price? According to folks on this board rents are coming down.

Juice I beleive meg wants to do this under the radar without management knowing about it. I wouldn't take the chance and yes Juice rents look like they are a rising. If you don't have any buyers the only people left are renters.

There's no legal issues here, unless the apartment is stabilized, in which case there are rules around how much they can increase the rent (but certainly not whether they can do so).

I might just go and talk with the landlord with an approach something along the lines of "we were thinking of moving to a bigger place, but maybe the place upstairs would work for us; can we work something out?" It would be in their interest to try and avoid having to rent out two different apartments, and they should be slightly more flexible on the rent given that they don't have to do any real marketing. It's really just whatever you're able to negotiate, though.

Sounds like a great idea to me! Just move in upstairs & start paying the rent up there as the current renters have been doing. Of course, you'll still have to pay the rent on your current apartment so that the landlord doesn't know what's going on but, hey, what the eff, you're getting away with something. ARE YOU SERIOUS??????????????????