Income Restricted Apartments in NYC: What You Can Actually Buy

A one-person household earning up to $142,560 in 2026 sits inside the 120% Area Median Income cap that most New York City HDFC co-ops use, and that is the ceiling on the only income-restricted apartment in the city you can buy off the open market this month. The phrase "income restricted apartment" covers three different NYC programs that work nothing alike. Two of them are waiting lists and lotteries. One of them is a deed and a set of shares you can purchase whenever a unit comes up for sale.

I have been licensed since November 2001, and I represent both buyers and sellers on HDFC co-ops. As of this writing I have an active HDFC listing, a three-bedroom co-op at 15 Fort Washington Avenue in Washington Heights, so the income-cap math on this page is the same math I run with buyers on the phone. The pattern I see most often is a buyer who has spent a year on lottery entries without knowing that a purchasable version of the same idea trades every week on the RLS.

What "Income Restricted" Means in New York City

An income-restricted apartment is a unit where a government program limits who may occupy or purchase it, based on how the household income compares against Area Median Income. AMI is set annually by HUD for the New York City region and published by NYC HPD. The 2026 figure for a three-person family is $152,700 at 100% AMI. Every program below states its limits as a percentage of that number, scaled by household size.

The restriction is attached to the housing, not to a person. Nothing in these programs turns on who anyone is; the only qualifying test is the household income figure and the household size, applied the same way to every applicant.

1. HDFC Co-ops: The One You Can Buy

HDFC stands for Housing Development Fund Corporation, a structure created under New York State Private Housing Finance Law. In the 1970s the city took title to thousands of buildings whose owners stopped paying taxes, then transferred them to resident-owned cooperatives. Roughly 33,000 units across about 1,500 buildings still operate this way, concentrated in Manhattan with meaningful supply in Brooklyn and smaller counts in the Bronx and Queens.

Three things define the deal:

• Income cap at purchase. Set per building in the offering plan, commonly 80%, 120%, or 165% of AMI. At 120%, that is $142,560 for one person and $203,520 for four. At 165%, $196,020 for one person and $279,840 for four.
• Resale restrictions. Most buildings cap the resale price by formula, usually original purchase price plus a fixed annual appreciation rate plus approved capital improvements, and add a flip tax that commonly runs 20% to 30% of profit or of sale price. Your future buyer has to clear the same income cap you did.
• Pricing below market. Purchase prices typically run 30% to 50% under comparable market-rate units, and maintenance is often lower because the building holds a property tax exemption.

The legal structure is a standard co-op: shares plus a proprietary lease, board package, board interview, board approval. Primary residence is required at virtually every building. The full mechanics, including the flip tax math and the financing problem, are in the HDFC co-op buyer guide and the 2026 HDFC article. Current inventory is at HDFC co-ops for sale in the RLS feed, and the short-answer questions are collected in the HDFC FAQ.

2. Mitchell-Lama: Purchase by Waiting List

Mitchell-Lama was signed into law in 1955, sponsored by State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama, and it produced both rental and cooperative developments for moderate- and middle-income households. Some developments are supervised by New York City through HPD; others are supervised by New York State through HCR. The cooperative side is ownership, which is why it belongs on a page about buying.

You cannot make an offer on a Mitchell-Lama co-op the way you would on an HDFC unit. HPD states the process directly: apartments are sold or rented through waiting lists kept by each development, there is no master list, and you apply to each development separately. Many lists are closed because existing applicants already cover expected vacancies. When a development reopens its list, new applications are accepted through a lottery, and those openings are posted on Housing Connect. HPD also publishes which developments currently hold open or short waiting lists, and the application fee for new waitlist applicants has been $75 since August 2019.

Every Mitchell-Lama development sets eligibility rules covering income limits, family size, and apartment size, and the maximum income limits differ between federally assisted rentals and cooperatives. Do not plan around a number you read on a forum; read the development's own posted limits. Official sources: NYC HPD Mitchell-Lama program and NYS HCR Mitchell-Lama.

3. NYC Housing Connect: The Lottery Portal

Housing Connect is the city's application portal for income-restricted housing lotteries. Most of what appears there is rental, and rental applications are handled entirely through the city, not through a broker. A smaller share of Housing Connect postings are homeownership opportunities, and the portal is also where Mitchell-Lama waiting-list lotteries are now posted. Applications are free and are submitted directly at housingconnect.nyc.gov.

Treat Housing Connect as a parallel track rather than a substitute. A lottery entry costs nothing but time and pays off on a schedule nobody controls. An HDFC purchase runs on a normal transaction timeline: offer, attorney review, board package, closing, typically 60 to 90 days from acceptance to approval. Most of the qualified buyers I work with run both at once.

Four Things "Income Restricted" Does Not Mean

How to Check Whether You Qualify

1. Total the household income. Gross annual income, all sources, every adult who will occupy the unit.
2. Run it against the caps. The HDFC eligibility calculator compares that figure to the 120% and 165% AMI thresholds for your household size. It is a screening estimate, not a determination.
3. Confirm the building number. The binding cap is the one in that building's offering plan. Confirm it with the listing agent before you make an offer, and have your attorney read the plan before you sign anything.
4. Keep the lottery track open. Register on Housing Connect and check the HPD waiting-list pages while you shop the purchasable inventory.