A monetarily secure hedge fund manager is suing to keep his rent on Park Avenue rock bottom. Though Ross Haberman could afford the increase (which could be as much as thirty times what he’s paying now) his lawyer says he shouldn’t have to since he was willed the apartment by his late grandpa, real-estate legend Louis Katz. But despite what the last letter said, relatives want him to pay up.
When gramps died, he left apartments in two of his deluxe buildings—530 and 737 Park Avenue—to his three kids, and set-up $300 rentals for his grandchildren. Haberman’s rent is a bit higher because when he combined two apartments on the ninth and tenth floors of 737 Park there was a $80 hike. Still it’s not a bad deal (not that much more than Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were paying actually), since according to Streeteasy, a 2,000-square-foot duplex like his rented in November for $8,500 a month. Other residents of the building were shocked to learn what he was paying. "$380? Wow, that's a deal," Richard Foxman told the Daily News. "People would go nuts for a deal like that. I could understand him suing to keep it from going up exponentially."
But some of his relatives aren’t so understanding. Many have quit their apartments, but still maintain a financial interest in the building and want the rent to be closer to market value. Haberman’s cousin and neighbor Lauren Katz proposed a resolution that said so, which led the hedge funder to file his suit claiming that the rent increase has "no legal force" and that if there's any justice in the world he should stay in his apartments "at the same rental rate."
