Two months out from New York’s mayoral election, 33-year-old state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has a commanding lead in the polls. With a democratic socialist the favorite to take over the business capital of the world, Miami real estate brokers say they are being flooded with inquiries from wealthy New Yorkers.
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“We have had calls every single day since the primary with somebody calling us and saying, ‘We're moving, we don't care if he wins. We're moving even if he doesn't win,’” Jills Zeder Group Sales Associate Judy Zeder said at Bisnow’s Women Leading Real Estate event last week.
Mamdani won the Democratic primary in June and has maintained a 15-to-20-point lead over his top competitor, former Gov. and now independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, with Republican Curtis Sliwa in third and New York Mayor Eric Adams, elected in 2021 as a Democrat but now also running as an independent, in fourth.
The front-runner has run on a campaign of freezing rent for the city’s 1 million stabilized apartments, borrowing $70B to develop city-owned affordable housing, free bus fare and city-owned grocery stores — which he plans to do by increasing revenue through taxes on businesses and the wealthy.
While many of his plans require state approval and thus have no assurance of becoming reality if he wins, Mamdani's candidacy was nevertheless the talk of the event, held at the InterContinental Hotel in Downtown Miami.
“That's the travesty, that the people who are the highest taxpayers and the highest producers of jobs leave when these things happen,” Cervera Real Estate Managing Partner Alicia Cervera Lamadrid said.
Within hours of Mamdani’s primary win in June, New York’s commercial real estate owners and investors had already begun recalibrating. Some were already setting their sights on South Florida, with predictions of the exodus equaling the pandemic era.
While some have dismissed the prospect of a South Florida boom, a possible Mamdani mayoralty is becoming increasingly likely. And in Florida, where its business-friendly reputation stems from the lack of state or corporate income tax and lawmakers continue to pass developer-friendly state laws, the environment is all the more enticing.
Miami brokers have already started preparing. Lamadrid said she will travel to New York on Sept. 25 with Miami-based Master Brokers Forum and its sister organization, the New York Realtors Association Council, to discuss how to sell real estate in Miami.
“For the New Yorkers to be so clear about what's happening and to be getting prepared, it's a terrifying thing,” she said. “So, while it may be a win for Miami, it's not a win for our country. And if our country's not winning, we're not winning. So it's very sad, but it is going to have an impact, and we have to be ready for it.”
With more than 9,000 condo units across 37 projects in Miami’s pipeline, according to a July Miami Realtors report, the city is in a good spot to support the projected growth, OneWorld Properties CEO Peggy Olin said.
But while Miami's sellers of luxury real estate expect a boost if Mamdani takes control, they aren’t basking in victory.
“It's great for Miami,” Zeder said. “I think it's heartbreaking for [New York], because I think when cities have something bad that happened to them, they don't always recover.”
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