Tag: Zohran Mamdani real estate

For months, real estate professionals have speculated about what Mayor Zohran Mamdani will mean for the industry.

Now, these conversations aren’t hypothetical. 

Mamdani was sworn in as the new mayor of New York City during a midnight ceremony Thursday by state Attorney General Letitia James. A separate public swearing-in ceremony will be held on the steps of City Hall on Thursday afternoon. Sen. Bernie Sanders will deliver the oath of office at that event. 

Top of mind for owners of rent-stabilized housing is Mamdani’s campaign promise to freeze rents for regulated tenants for four years. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board decides how much landlords can increase rents on one- and two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments, though mayors have influenced the board’s decisions.

Mamdani’s pledge was complicated by Mayor Eric Adams’ last-minute appointments, though one appointee decided against serving on the board.    

He has also, however, acknowledged that a rent freeze alone cannot solve the city’s housing crisis. He also wants to change the city’s property tax system and work with the state to find alternative insurance options to help owners reduce costs. 

Mamdani has shown support for a lawsuit challenging the city’s property tax regime, and his administration could make changes that are being pushed by Tax Equity Now New York, the industry-backed group that filed the lawsuit. Still, broader changes, including the designation of condos and co-ops that determines how they are assessed, would require state intervention. 

He also wants the state to raise corporate and income taxes to help pay for his policy priorities, both of which have faced opposition from the business community. 

Mamdani has also vowed to crack down on bad landlords and to revamp the city’s Office to Protect Tenants, which was launched under Mayor Bill de Blasio but has languished over the past few years. Mamdani wants the office to identify distressed multifamily buildings with unpaid fines or unaddressed dangerous conditions and find ways for the city to take control of these buildings, either through foreclosing on the properties or cutting deals with the owners.  

Though many in the industry supported former Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of the June primary, some were heartened by Mamdani’s recognition of the private sector’s role in addressing the housing crisis. 

After Mamdani’s win in November, David Kramer, president of Hudson Companies, told The Real Deal that when he and other affordable housing developers met with Mamdani, the mayoral hopeful assured them that he wasn’t running to punish landlords. 

“In our conversations with him, he struck me as somebody that was going to be practical,” Kramer said at the time. 

The new mayor has said that he wants to build 200,000 units of new affordable housing over the next decade. Some were concerned that last-minute action by the City Council would hurt his ability to execute that plan. Specifically, housing groups worried that a package of bills that set new requirements for the kinds of housing the city finances would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s budget needs.   

But in his final hours as mayor, Eric Adams vetoed those measures as well as the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA. It’s unclear whether the next City Council speaker will try to override the vetoes on these measures. Mamdani has been supportive of COPA, so he could also encourage the City Council to approve a new version of the policy instead. 

The new administration is also tasked with implementing the housing ballot measures approved in November that create new pathways for housing projects to be approved. The changes allow certain projects to avoid City Council approval and for an appeals board to reverse the Council’s rejection of others. Adams has left behind other initiatives for Mamdani to potentially pick up, including the so-called Manhattan Plan, which recommends different ways of ramping up construction in the borough. 

Mamdani is still filling out his administration, but has appointed Adams administration alum Leila Bozorg as his deputy mayor of housing and planning. He also named Ahmed Tigani, who has served as acting HPD commissioner under Adams, as his Department of Buildings commissioner. He has not yet announced who will lead HPD or the Department of City Planning.  

In the coming months, the new mayor’s policy priorities will become clearer, as will his ability to deliver on campaign promises as he navigates working with the City Council and state legislature.  

Read more

Real estate will have to work with Mayor Mamdani. Now what?

Adams stacks Rent Guidelines Board 

Real estate braces for Mamdani

One South Florida broker is betting on New York’s mayoral race chaos.

Dina Goldentayer, a top broker with Douglas Elliman in Miami, took out a billboard in Times Square urging New Yorkers to ditch the Big Apple for the Magic City, seemingly capitalizing on the industry’s fears of a Zohran Mamdani victory in the mayoral race. 

Goldentayer featured the billboard in a video posted to her Instagram, where she plays the part of a buyer calling her partner from a private plane.

“Honey, I called the jet. We’re moving to Miami.”

The social media ad echoes warnings from other luxury agents who have been warning of an exodus of the city’s wealthy residents since Mamdani prevailed in the Democratic primary earlier this summer. 

“My number one job will be moving people from New York to Florida. Again,” Serhant told the New York Post shortly after the vote. “Based on the results, clients are going to hold off on making any kind of investment in New York City.”

Whether a Mamdani triumph will send New Yorkers who aren’t already spending six months and a day down South packing is still up for debate, but it’s clear that real estate is jittery over the prospect. 

The industry’s support has vacillated between former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, with its power players throwing their weight behind both candidates, according to the latest round of campaign donations. 

But as rumor has it, President Donald Trump’s administration has been mulling over potential positions for Adams and the Republican mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa, in an attempt to consolidate opposition to Mamdani and give the challenger, likely Cuomo, a stronger shot at beating him in the general election. 

The latest reports, which circulated on Friday, indicated the president’s advisers, including developer Steve Witkoff, were in talks to offer Adams an ambassadorship in Saudi Arabia. 

Adams has denied that he’d had any discussions with the administration, though he appeared to soften his position in a statement released on Friday and published in the New York Times. 

In the statement, Adams said that “no formal offers have been made” and that he is “still running for re-election.”

But if the rumors prove true, Goldentayer may have to rethink the billboard. 

What we’re thinking about: The number of millionaire renters in the United States nearly tripled between 2019 and 2023, outpacing the increase in the number of millionaire homeowners, according to data from RentCafe. 

New York City led the charge with roughly 5,600 millionaire households leasing homes in the city — but where are they renting? Send thoughts on which projects, buildings or neighborhoods to sheridan.wall@therealdeal.com. 

A thing we’ve learned: Keith and Bruce Robinson own 100,000 acres of land between Kauai and a private island off the coast called Niihau — an assemblage larger than Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 90,000-acre plot on Lanai and a whopping 40 times bigger than Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial compound on Kauai, according to Business Insider. 

To put it in further perspective, the size of the Robinsons’ land holdings, which the family purchased from the Hawaiian monarchy in the 1800s, is almost seven Manhattans. 

Elsewhere in New York…

— Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani tapped two associates of former Mayor Bill de Blasio to join his campaign, according to City & State New York. Elana Leopold, a political strategist, will serve as a senior adviser for the Democratic nominee’s campaign, while Louise Yeung, who worked previously under de Blasio’s Department of Transportation and as chief climate officer for comptroller Brad Lander, will serve as policy director.

— Here’s a new form of protest: A town Council candidate in Cranford, New Jersey, started break dancing at a town hall meeting to push back against property tax increases, according to ABC6 Action News. The candidate, Will Thilly, took a brief pause to raise questions about the tax changes, only to resume his moves, including an attempt at a backspin. 

Closing Time 

Residential: The top residential deal recorded Friday was $4.1 million for 140 East 63rd Street, 13/14D. The duplex condo unit in Lenox Hill’s Barbizon is 3,000 square feet. The Corcoran Group’s Nathalie Wang, Nicole Hechter and Asaf Bar-Lev have the listing. 

Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $16.5 million for 78-10 164th Street. The Hillcrest healthcare center is three stories and 31,300 square feet.

New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $33 million for 912 5th Avenue, Unit 10. The Lenox Hill co-op is 5,600 square feet. Brown Harris Stevens reportedly has the listing.

Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 434,890-square-foot, 14-story residential building at 54-09 100th Street in Queens. Ariel Aufgang of Aufgang Architects is the applicant of record.
 — Joseph Jungermann