Yahoo Finance’s Ronda Lee joins the Live show to discuss the New York City housing board’s decision to increase rent for rent-stabilized homes by 3.25%.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: As the price of just about everything else is rising, rent continues to climb to record highs as well, as US single family rents jumped an average of 14% year over year in April. Miami feeling the worst of it. Rent there rose nearly 41%. For more on this, let's welcome in Yahoo Finance's Ronda Lee. And guess what? For the-- I love this, like, classic New York story, too. I was sitting in our morning meeting. Everybody knows there's sort of the apocryphal aunt or grandparent of a friend that has the rent stabilized New York City apartment. But those prices are going up, too.

RONDA LEE: They're going up, but they're still a bargain. I almost dated somebody to get on [INAUDIBLE] I'm ready to do a "Will and Grace" to get cheap rent, and everybody else is. So around the country, average rents have gone up. They're-- it's like $2,000. We're already talking about housing being unaffordable. But if you can't afford a house and you're renting, this is a hard hit. So generally, just nationwide, average median rent's $2,000.

Now, New Yorkers, that's a different ball of wax. So in New York, we have rent controlled, rent stabilized. The aunt, if you watched "Friends," Monica had that beautiful big apartment. How did she get it? It was rent controlled from her grandmother. That's why she was able to afford that. So you have your rent controlled people, who basically pay the same rent that they've been paying since the 1960s. That passes down from family members. Then you have rent stabilized. Only in New York can you make six figures and still be eligible for subsidized rent.

So this is what that 3.25% is impacting, the people who are rent controlled and rent stabilized. So the rent stabilized people, there is a law that prevents how much the rent can go up. If you are not in a rent controlled or rent stabilized, you are probably like most people who got that 40% increase. So this is what this law impacts. The downside is, most of the people who are receiving this, particularly if they're low income, are probably already strapped. So having this increase is not going to help because most of them just came out of rent moratorium. So we're stuck.

BRAD SMITH: And so this comes at a time where we know that there's a squeeze on the rental market because you have people who were in the home buying market, but then had to kind of pull back because of some of the rising mortgage rates. And so, as a result of that, they're going back into the rental market. And you have people who are already in the rental market that were looking for deals, not necessarily getting deals, but seeing the opposite side of that. And so that squeeze taking place. What can somebody do to limit the impact of how much they're paying on monthly rent?

RONDA LEE: It all depends. And unfortunately, if you have-- if your landlord is probably a mom and pop, maybe they can work with you. But most of the people in New York have a landlord that's some investment firm. They don't care. Then that's the bottom line. So if you have somebody that can work with you, you work with them, because some landlords understand-- they're mom and pop-- that I value my property. I want somebody who's going to take care of it. [INAUDIBLE]

JULIE HYMAN: Is it like that in other cities and other areas, too?

RONDA LEE: Yes. In Chicago, I lived in the prime downtown South Loop neighborhood. My landlord rarely increased my rent because, like, you take care of my place. We have people in there, and we charge them double what we were playing you. They messed my place up. So I got a huge rent reduction because they were like, my property value is going to stay the same because of you. That's the benefit of having someone that's a landlord that actually owns it versus somebody--

JULIE HYMAN: Well, that's an interesting tip then. In most places, you can at least try to negotiate. Whether you'll succeed might be a different thing. But you can at least try.

BRAD SMITH: All right.

JULIE HYMAN: It's worth a try.

BRAD SMITH: That's the write-up that we need right now, five tips for negotiating your rent in this environment, too. We know you're already on you way.

JULIE HYMAN: Now you're signing her stories?

BRAD SMITH: I mean, it's just an idea. We're just brainstorming here.

RONDA LEE: But people need to know.

BRAD SMITH: People need it, yes. Ronda, thanks so much for joining us here today.