Landlords sue New York over rent-stabilization rules for vacant apartments  

After several lawsuits tried and failed to overturn New York’s rent-stabilization law, a new complaint is taking a different approach.  The lawsuit, filed by the Small Property Owners of New York and a few individual landlords, takes aim at how the state law applies to vacant apartments. The complaint alleges that capping rents on vacant units violates the takings clause in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because it “directly takes from the value of the apartment’s leasehold.”  That, the lawsuit alleges, results “either in a complete taking (by making it economically impossible to rent the leasehold) or a […] This article originally appeared on The Real Deal. Click here to read the full story.