NYC Rent stabilization question

[Nicholas Sedorus]

Interested in the NYC market and have been reading into rent stabilization.  It seems one of the requirements that a building be stabilized is that it has 6 or more units.  If you were to combine several of the units together to the point there are only 5 units in the building, would this destabilize the whole building and be able to bring the rents up to market rates once the leases laps?  This seems like an easy loophole, which makes me think there is a laws preventing it.  Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks in advance!

[Eric Vasilopoulos]

Hi Nicholas, did you end up finding this out? I am also curios about it