A rent freeze is here. So what are landlords going to do about it?
Sue, most likely.
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“It’s going to be very likely that there will be a challenge,” said Massimo D’Angelo, co-chair of the real estate industry team at law firm Blank Rome. “It could be as quick as Monday, but generally it will take a couple weeks to assess and to file a carefully tailored pleading.”
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D’Angelo said the two strongest arguments at landlords’ disposal rely on prohibitions on regulatory taking and on requirements for due process.
“Property owners can assert that any legislative-imposed rent freeze constitutes regulatory taking, which deprives them of a reasonable return on investment, without any just compensation,” he said.
However, courts usually defer to local jurisdictions on issues of rent regulation, he added. Landlords might successfully argue that the freeze does not properly account for rising operating costs. They would need to show that the economic impact of a freeze and its interference with investment expectations is severe, he said.
Another potentially stronger legal argument could be that rent freeze violates requirements for due process, D’Angelo said. Landlords would in that case argue that data on operating expenses weren’t properly considered. The city would then supply its documents around the board’s analysis and deliberations. A challenger would try to argue that those deliberations were arbitrary.
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"Here Come the Rent Freeze Lawsuits," by Lilah Burke published in The Real Deal on June 26, 2026.