Renewal time!

So my ex-roommate and I both got certified letters with renewal leases a couple weeks ago. As I'm never home during the day (who is?), I got a "we missed" you brown slip from the USPS. I waited until Saturday to go to the package room and pick it up, but FYI apparently all articles requiring signature are held at the post office at Nostrand and Ave I, despite the paper indicating it's held in the package room.

1. My stabilized rate is below the "new tenant market rate" advertised on the website, and thus, my renewal lease is being offered at the legal limit. However, the ex-roommate's legal limit is $75 over the current "new tenant market rate" advertised on the website. So to answer the question we've speculated about for a while: her renewal lease is being offered at the legal limit. No preferential rate, just the legal limit which is $75 over what new tenants are paying for a 1-bedroom.

2. NY Property Law requires renewal leases to be sent to stabilized tenants no more than 150 days before expiration and no less than 90 days before expiration. They sent ours 84 days from expiration. The penalty/remedy for this is that the old rental rate will be in effect for all rent due dates occurring prior to 90 days from the mailing date. In other words, July 1st, which will be my first rental payment under the new lease will be on the old scale, and not the new one. I should have signed a 2-year lease, and then all 12 months would be on the old scale. Oh well, that's just hind-sight. I strongly considered moving, and still am not 100% for renewal. BTW, I plan on exercising that right to save $100 in July, but the ex-roommate (who would save $150) is just going to pay whatever they ask for. Some people just don't like a good fight.

Anyway.

In other neighborhood news. I went to 11am mass. While at mass I noticed that it was full, with people lining the side walls, and people packed into the back as full as possible. However, when I left I noticed about 75-100 people standing on the steps and the sidewalk "attending" mass, who couldn't fit in. It was a busy Easter for the Catholics in Flatbush.