Updated September 2026. Every NYC housing lottery runs on one rulebook, HPD and HDC’s Marketing Handbook, now in its April 2026 edition. Every income band in a lottery ad is a percentage of one number: the 2026 Area Median Income for the region, $152,700 for a three-person family. Own the building rather than want the apartment? HPD lottery management is the piece MGNY runs.

Two different people search for the NYC housing lottery. One wants an apartment and is working out whether they qualify and what the real chances are. The other has a building that needs a lottery before anyone can move in. This page describes the same machine from both ends.

What is the NYC housing lottery?

It is not one drawing. It is the process the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and its sister agency, the Housing Development Corporation, require before income-restricted apartments in a City-assisted building can be rented or sold. HPD puts it plainly: developers of City-sponsored affordable housing “are required to follow HPD/HDC marketing and resident selection procedures.” They fill one 74-page document, the Marketing Handbook.

The apartments come out of a bargain. A developer took a tax exemption, a zoning bonus, City financing, or some mix, and in exchange a fixed number of units are rent-restricted and capped by household income. The lottery decides who gets them, not the owner.

What is Housing Connect, and how do you apply?

NYC Housing Connect is, in HPD’s words, “New Yorkers’ portal to find and apply for affordable housing opportunities across the five boroughs of New York City.” The version in use launched July 1, 2020. You build one profile covering the household, its income and its assets, then apply from it to individual lotteries.

Paper still counts. The handbook accepts every application “postmarked or date-stamped prior to and including the application deadline date,” keyed in by hand afterward.

Apply once per lottery. Two applications for one project with different household members is a “multiple application,” and the rule is unforgiving: “all applications for that applicant must be found ineligible.” Identical duplicates are not voided, but the agent uses “the application with the highest log number (lowest chance of being selected).”

How does the NYC housing lottery work, step by step?

The ad goes up on Housing Connect and the marketing period opens, running “at least 60 calendar days prior to application deadline date” under standard marketing. Nothing is judged in that window: “no application will be found ineligible prior to entering the lottery,” so even an application that will fail on income gets a number.

Paper applications are entered seven to ten business days after the deadline, with agency monitors present “strictly to observe the opening of applications and completion of the paper entry.” Then the draw: “once all paper applications have been entered, Housing Connect randomizes both online and paper applications, thereby generating the lottery log.” That log number is your position, and the whole of your luck.

Selection then runs in a fixed order, not straight down the list. Set-asides and preferences are batched first, in this sequence: households including a person with a disability (a minimum of five percent of units for mobility, two percent for hearing or vision), then residents of the building’s Community District, then, for lotteries published from November 15, 2025, New York City municipal employees and military veterans, whose combined preference is ten percent of the units (or one unit, whichever is greater), replacing the earlier five percent municipal-employee preference. City residents in the general pool then go before non-residents. Only then does the log run in numerical order, and only where “units of appropriate size are available.” HPD sizes the community preference project by project; the handbook fixes no percentage.

Applicants who are reached submit documents, get verified, tour, and sign. An offer carries five weekdays to respond before the agent moves on. Preferences apply to the initial lottery only, unless a regulatory agreement says otherwise, though disability set-asides survive into re-rentals.

What are the income requirements for an NYC housing lottery?

Every band is a percentage of Area Median Income, which HUD publishes each year. For 2026 that is $152,700 for a three-person New York City family, so a lottery advertised “at 80% of AMI” means households earning up to 80 percent of it, adjusted for household size. HPD’s test: housing is affordable if it “costs about one-third or less of what the people living there earn.”

2026 New York City income limits, HPD. Bands: 0-30% extremely low, 31-50% very low, 51-80% low, 81-120% moderate, 121-165% middle.

There is a floor as well as a ceiling, and it catches more people. Minimum income is set “based on 35 percent of the gross annual rent for the unit,” which in practice means the rent may take no more than about 35 percent of income: a $2,000 unit needs roughly $68,600 a year, $24,000 divided by 0.35. A household can be turned away for earning too little as readily as too much, though HPD bars minimum incomes for applicants with tenant-based Section 8 and other qualifying subsidies. Assets are capped too, at the HUD income limit for a four-person household at that AMI band. Household size must fit the apartment: on HPD’s chart a studio takes one to two people, a one-bedroom one to three. A voucher is not a disqualifier. The middle-income rows follow their own logic, which how the 130% AMI units get rented works through.

What are the odds of winning an NYC housing lottery?

Long, and the city’s own figures say so. HPD reported that in 2024 it connected “nearly 14,654 households to affordable homes, including more than 10,000 through Housing Connect lotteries,” and in the same April 2025 announcement that “hundreds of thousands applied.” The distance between those numbers is the answer.

Two structural facts matter more than the ratio. A lease-up often finishes before the log is exhausted, since “lease-up or sales may be completed before all applicants on the log have been processed or contacted,” so silence usually means a high log number, not a rejection. And preferences carry weight: a Community District resident, a municipal employee or military veteran, or a household including a person with a disability enters an earlier batch. What is actually within an applicant’s control? Applying to many lotteries, once to each, and having documents ready, because the offer window is five weekdays.

How does a building get a lottery, and who runs it?

The owner starts it, typically seven months before anticipated occupancy, or around 70 percent construction completion where a certificate of occupancy is needed. A Notice of Intent to Begin Marketing goes to the agency, a marketing meeting follows, and a Marketing Plan is approved in Housing Connect before any ad runs.

An owner may run the lottery through an in-house department, but only one HPD has prequalified. HPD requires developers to “propose a Qualified Marketing Agent for HPD and/or HDC approval to begin marketing prior to each marketing effort,” and that agent must sit on HPD’s Pre-Qualified List, opened September 12, 2022. Read in September 2026 it names 86 firms, MGNY Consulting Corp. among them.

What does a marketing agent actually do? Advertising and outreach, the PO box, the supervised paper entry, the batching, document verification, file submission, tours, lease signing, and the initial rent roll. Leftovers too: units unleased once the log runs out go to homeless referrals, up to the lesser of 15 percent of the project’s units or whatever remains.

State-financed buildings run a parallel version through New York State Homes and Community Renewal, which requires that “the initial selection process must be made on a random basis through the use of a lottery and not on a first-come first-served basis,” a marketing plan filed 240 days before occupancy, and a 60-day listing.

Owners hire an agent because lease-up is the last gate in front of the tax benefit the deal was built around, and a mishandled log is expensive to unwind. MGNY works as an approved HPD marketing agent on buildings including 5Pointz LIC, JDS’s Brooklyn Tower and Brookfield’s Bankside, carrying log reviews, document verification, tours and leasing through one portal, then stays on as marketing monitor, re-marketing vacant units and filing the quarterly rent rolls HPD requires.

What does it cost to ask MGNY?

Nothing. A real person answers at (212) 343-1111, right away, and the consultation is free. You engage us only if you want the work handled for you. MGNY has worked NYC property tax since 2008, with $50M+ in tax refunds secured for owners, 900+ developments with tax abatements secured and $30B+ represented in appeals.

Two related pages: the NYC Housing Connect guide covers the portal itself, from the profile to the snapshot and the re-rental waiver, and the HPD page explains the city housing agency behind it.

Sources: HPD and HDC’s Marketing Handbook, April 2026 edition; HPD’s Area Median Income page, 2026 income limits; HPD’s Marketing Guidelines and Marketing Agent Pre-Qualified List; HPD’s NYC Housing Connect page; HPD’s press release of April 29, 2025 on Marketing Handbook changes; and New York State Homes and Community Renewal’s Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan guidance, last modified September 12, 2022. All read September 2026. MGNY Consulting is a private consulting firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development or NYS Homes and Community Renewal.

Get our updates first on Google. Rules move: HPD reissued the Marketing Handbook in April 2026, carrying the policies in force since April 1, 2025, and added the municipal employee and veteran preference in November 2025. Tap the button and Google adds MGNY Consulting to your preferred sources, so our coverage surfaces first in your results. No signup and no email, and one tap undoes it.

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