'Give Him A Chance': NYC Real Estate Leaders Preach Pragmatism For Mamdani Era

After months of threats from business leaders that Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York City would spur an exodus, no flights have been booked and no bags have been packed. 

Instead, most real estate executives woke up Wednesday with an air of resigned optimism, hoping the 34-year-old democratic socialist will work with them to fix the city's housing crisis and fail to implement some of his other key promises.

And while some brokers said it was business as usual and no clients were spooked, many cautioned that Mamdani still has the capacity to scare away investment.

“He could be more like Fiorello La Guardia or Fidel Castro,” Wharton Property Advisors President and CEO Ruth Colp-Haber said. “Time will tell.”

Mamdani's only political experience is as a member of the New York State Assembly, representing Astoria and Ditmars-Steinway since 2021. Before that, he was a foreclosure prevention counselor. 

In less than two months, he will take over the largest city in the U.S. and the largest local economy in the world, with an annual GDP of more than $1T and a fiscal year budget of $116B. 

While there has been doomsaying galore about Mamdani's mayoralty and tens of millions spent to prevent it, many industry players had changed their tune by Wednesday morning. 

“For those who were critical or concerned about him, I would say let’s reserve judgment and give him a chance,” said Bruce Teitelbaum, who is planning a 1,000-unit apartment project in Harlem.

MaryAnne Gilmartin, who developed the Barclays Center in Brooklyn as president of Forest City Ratner, said she spent time with the mayor-elect before Election Day and came away encouraged by their conversations. 

“Pragmatism is really important, because the panic does nothing,” said Gilmartin, CEO and founder of developer MAG Partners. “I've been around long enough where you know the obituary from New York City is written, it's doom and gloom, and it doesn't come to pass.”

Others are still stunned that the world's financial capital voted so convincingly for Mamdani — his margin over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who raised $40M from business interests, was roughly 10%. 

John Catsimatidis, a billionaire developer and prominent ally of President Donald Trump, in June threatened to close or sell his Manhattan-based grocery chain, Gristedes, if Mamdani won. 

Speaking to Bisnow on Wednesday, Catsimatidis, who is CEO of Red Apple Group, said he expects to reduce his companies' exposure to New York, but he didn't say he planned to pull completely out of his hometown.

“It’s just up in the air,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to get to this point.”

Real estate investment in the months between the primary and general elections would suggest many developers are bullish regardless. 

BXP started construction this summer on a $2B Midtown office tower. Vornado Realty Trust has a plethora of projects in the works, including a $4.5B supertall on Park Avenue, which it is gearing up to start building in partnership with Rudin and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. Nearby, JPMorgan Chase opened its $4B headquarters last month and plans to piece together a larger campus.

“I've been working on several different deals since this morning, and the results from the election last night have not derailed any one of them,” veteran sales broker Bob Knakal, chairman and CEO of BKREA, told Bisnow Wednesday.

The city's office and investment markets have seen a resurgence this year.

Nearly $5B of commercial properties traded hands in the third quarter alone, according to Avison Young, the busiest period since early 2022.

Average asking rents for Manhattan office space are at their highest in two years, and the borough is on track to exceed 40M SF of office leasing for the first time since 2019, according to Colliers. 

Financial firms’ push to get workers back in the office has pushed foot traffic in Manhattan offices to outpace every city in the nation outside Miami, according to the latest Placer.ai data. 

Peter Riguardi, head of JLL's New York office, said he had half a dozen client calls before 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, and none of them expressed hesitation about doing business in the city as a result of the election.

“So many bright young college graduates want to be here, so many AI jobs, banking jobs, tech jobs are here,” he said, although he added, “We are all anxious to see how he has now the ability to grow and govern.”

Mamdani’s pro-development agenda — with a plan to spend $100B subsidizing the construction of 200,000 units of permanently affordable housing — is encouraging, developers, landlords and brokers said. He also lists doubling the capital investment budget of the New York City Housing Authority and developing new publicly controlled housing as a part of his platform.

In private conversations with senior industry figures in the run-up to the election, Mamdani showed he understands developers’ role in alleviating New York City’s housing crisis, and pledges to work with the private sector were encouraging, Gilmartin said.

“He understands that that's how this job is going to get done,” she said. “There was nothing about my discussions with him that suggested that the city can do this without the industry.”

Recently passed, large-scale rezonings of entire neighborhoods, including Jamaica, Long Island City, Gowanus and Midtown South, may boost Mamdani’s chances of hitting development goals. 

Some, however, are still unsure how he will reach that number, especially as the 485-x tax incentive has limited developers from building large-scale projects.

“There's no way he can do it,” Teitelbaum said. “He will quickly realize that it's going to be impossible to build hundreds of thousands of genuinely affordable homes in the near term, under the current system and under existing rules.”

Demand for housing amid a historic 1.4% vacancy rate is keeping rents at record highs. Manhattan’s median rents were $4,550 a month in September, according to Douglas Elliman’s most recent report. The median monthly rent was $3,925 in Brooklyn and $3,650 in Northwestern Queens. 

Mamdani hasn’t backed down from his commitment to freeze rent on more than 1 million apartments. That message resonated during the campaign — he led his packed election night party in a “freeze the rent” call-and-response during his acceptance speech. 

That promise is one that landlords of rent-stabilized units are praying he breaks. 

In 2024, 57% of property owners recorded negative cash flow after paying off expenses and debt service, according to a study by nonprofit housing providers. That was up from 25% in 2019, when the state passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which eliminated ways for landlords to remove apartments from rent regulation and reduced the amount of repair costs they can pass on to tenants via rent increases.

The financial decline has spiraled even as the Rent Guidelines Board has raised stabilized rents during each year of the Adams administration, a cumulative 12% increase, after four years of frozen rent under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“It isn’t hyperbole when we say that rent freezes will be affordable housing Armageddon for tenants and owners,” Small Property Owners of New York Board President Ann Korchak and Vice President Lincoln Eccles said in a joint statement.

Mamdani should put pressure on Albany to lift the restrictions created by HSTPA, which could allow landlords to lease up tens of thousands of rent-stabilized units that are empty because landlords can’t afford to bring them to habitable conditions, Korchak and Eccles said.

Rents for regulated properties are controlled by the RGB. All nine members are appointed by the mayor, and seven are serving on expired terms, meaning they may be replaced at any time. 

Adams is reportedly considering replacing those with expired terms, which may make it more difficult for Mamdani to freeze rents — but not impossible. 

Mamdani will be able to appoint four new RGB members as of 2026. One member can’t be replaced by either mayor until 2027, when terms for all members, including any Adams appointees, will be over, giving Mamdani full control of the board.

“The problem is freezing the rent completely in the residential sphere and giving tenant protections … will cause these buildings not only to not be profitable, but they will be losses,” Meridian Investment Sales Senior Executive Managing Director David Schechtman said. “They will become too expensive to maintain the way they should be maintained.

“What happened in the 1970s where you had derelict buildings and owners who were pleased to walk away from ownership is exactly the path on which we're traveling,” he added.

Mamdani has less power to implement his other signature promises. He will need cooperation at the state level to raise corporate and income taxes to fill a $5B budget gap for the next fiscal year. 

“Is the MTA going to make buses free? I doubt it. Is the legislature going to raise taxes on rich people? I doubt it,” said Jeff Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate. “The reality is, Albany calls the shots, and I doubt if they're going to raise taxes in an election year coming up.”

Mamdani's most critical job will be as chief executive of a government with more than 306,000 employees. Multiple executives told Bisnow that Mamdani’s staffing choices will either bolster or diminish their faith in his capacity to lead the city.

“A good idea, improperly implemented, will become a bad idea,” Riguardi said. “I hope someone young and energetic surrounds themselves with people who can help him implement some good ideas that need to be properly thought out in a big city, like New York City."

In his campaign’s housing policy memo, Mamdani promised to “fully fund and staff our city’s housing agencies so we can actually get the work done.” During his acceptance speech Tuesday night, he added that “we will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy.”

Though what a balance of the two will look like is unknown, the transition team he unveiled Wednesday morning may provide some insights. 

Elana Leopold, a political strategist for Mamdani’s campaign, will serve as the transition’s executive director. She served in various roles under the de Blasio administration, including as senior aide and senior adviser in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, according to her Linkedin profile.

Maria Torres-Springer, who was first deputy mayor under Adams, was named a transition co-chair, alongside former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, community nonprofit United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla and former Deputy Mayor and city budget official Melanie Hartzog.

Notably, Torres-Springer spearheaded the passage of the City of Yes rezoning initiative popular with the real estate industry. She was among a group of Adams’ top aides who resigned nearly immediately after the Department of Justice decided to drop its felony charges against the mayor in February.

“[Mamdani] and I share an undimmed belief in government's capacity to deliver for working people,” Torres-Springer said at a press conference Wednesday.

Real estate professionals are a notoriously optimistic bunch, and many cited the city's robust recovery from the pandemic as evidence that nothing will strip it of its status as the financial capital of the world, regardless of who is in office. 

Wealthy buyers don't seem scared off: Nearly $1B of luxury condo and townhouse contracts were signed in the three weeks leading up to the election, according to Olshan Realty.

“If you're a big developer with a big project that you want to build, where else are you going to go?” Colp-Haber said.

There will be those turned off by a democratic socialist who called out bad landlords in his victory speech. Schechtman said he has had two deals collapse after investors decided they didn't want to stomach the political risk. But he has also fielded calls from international investors who think now is a great time to buy. 

“We can vote, we can kick, we can scream, we can picket-sign all we want, and that is important, and that is our freedom as Americans,” Okada & Co. founder Christopher Okada said. “But now there's a new regime. And we have to figure out, as we always do, every single decade, how do we evolve?”