REBNY taps Meister for Tishman rent battle.

Lawyer Stephen Meister, will represent REBNY as an amicus curiae if a recent State Supreme Court ruling that determined the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village had improperly deregulated apartments is granted an appeal.

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The decision earlier this month found that Tishman Speyer, the owner of the large 11,200-unit complex, had bumped stabilized rents to market rate when in fact those increases should have been banned because the complex receives J-51 tax credits.

The decision could leave Tishman Speyer liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in rent reimbursements if it is not reversed.

The real estate industry in the city has been incensed by the decision because the practice of deregulating apartments while receiving the tax credits was widespread and it appears that many landlords, like Tishman Speyer, would similarly be on the hook for potentially large reimbursement payments.

Meister said that the Supreme Court's ruling was incorrect because it misinterpreted the restrictions that J-51 tax credits impose on rent deregulation. To enter the J-51 program, which allows landlords a yearly tax credit equaling a twelfth of the cost of certain capital improvements they make on a property for a period of 12 years, owners must agree to bump rents for market rate apartments according to the prescribed increases allowed under rent stabilization.

About a year after the J-51 program was introduced in 1992, luxury deregulation laws were also put into effect, setting guidelines that determined conditions under which landlords could convert stabilized apartments to market rate.

Meister said that when the law was being contemplated, lawmakers saw a loophole in which landlords of properties that were receiving J-51 tax credits could use the deregulation process to immediately remove the market rate apartments from the rent escalation constraints they were forced to abide by as part of the program. Included then, were provisions in the luxury deregulation legislation that specifically prevented landlords from deregulating apartments whose regulation had come about as part of the property's participation in the J-51 program.

The Supreme Court, Meister said, misinterpreted that prohibition to include existing rent regulated apartments, which Meister said the luxury deregulation law doesn't protect as a result of a property's receiving J-51 credits.

Meister has enjoyed success in litigating complex real estate issues on behalf of some of the city's largest real estate developers and is well known for his expertise in the area of affordable housing.