Protesters waving indicators studying “Freeze the Hire” and “REBNY Raised My Hire” stationed themselves on the sidewalk exterior the Glasshouse, a Hell’s Kitchen venue the place the Actual Property Board of New York was internet hosting its annual gala final yr.
Among the many tenants and activists gathered exterior the occasion, nicknamed the “Liar’s Ball,” was Zohran Mamdani, then a New York assemblymember and mayoral hopeful. He’d simply introduced his candidacy three months prior, and although his successful was seen by most as a longshot, Mamdani’s marketing campaign fundraising efforts had already began to outpace a few of his opponents.
One of many pillars of his platform was a vow to halt lease hikes for tenants of rent-stabilized properties — a pledge he repeated loudly and proudly that didn’t win him any favors with town’s actual property gamers, a lot of whom have been wanting down on the protests from six flooring above.
Fast forward a year, and Mamdani is now the 112th mayor of New York Metropolis, a lot to the chagrin of many within the trade, who shelled out tens of millions in an effort to thwart his victory and maintain his Democratic socialist ideologies out of Gracie Mansion. After 4 years of a relative reprieve below Mayor Eric Adams, it appeared actual property can be again as town authorities’s ghouls.
“Let’s not demonize actual property,” David Schechtman of Meridian Funding Gross sales stated on the 2026 version of the REBNY gala, on the Waldorf Astoria. “For a few years, we’ve held up this metropolis.”
Regardless of its opposition to Mamdani, after the final election, it appeared the mayor — who had already admitted he’d modified his thoughts in regards to the function of personal builders in fixing town’s housing disaster — was ready to at the least hearken to trade stakeholders.
Shortly after his win, Mamdani held closed-door conferences with builders, lenders and buyers together with Tishman Speyer CEO Rob Speyer, Two Bushes CEO and REBNY chair Jed Walentas and Nadeem Meghji, world co-head of actual property at Blackstone, amongst others, the place he assured them that his administration can be open to listening to their issues.
“It’s necessary for the politicians to embrace the actual property trade. We pay the payments.”
Then he made a sequence of appointments that appeared comparatively promising. He tapped Leila Bozorg because the deputy mayor of housing and planning. Bozorg beforehand served as Adams’ govt director of housing and has been credited as a key determine in passing the Metropolis of Sure for Housing Alternative laws, which many within the trade heralded as a big step towards rising growth.
He additionally added Ahmed Tigani, one other Adams alumnus, to his administration because the Commissioner of the Division of Buildings.
However his first few official actions didn’t sign cooperation, although he continues to hammer the concept the personal sector ought to play a task in new growth. He tapped a longtime foe of landlords to supervise a tenant safety company, then introduced town would host a sequence of hearings that set the stage for public landlord shaming classes.
“It completely smelled, appeared and felt like a really significant sign shift,” stated Peter Hungerford, CEO of PH Realty Capital, which, together with its companions, has been one of the lively patrons of rent-stabilized buildings lately. He described a number of of Mamdani’s first strikes as “extra confrontational and aggressive to house owners.”
Now many within the trade are as soon as once more making ready to be forged as henchmen contributing to all the metropolis’s ills.
“Inside only a few hours of the inauguration, [Mamdani] instantly maintained the place that present property house owners are the bogeyman,” Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Condominium Affiliation, stated. “It can’t be true that each single operator is all of the sudden a slumlord.”
Hal Fetner, CEO of Fetner Properties, expressed uncertainty in regards to the new mayoral administration, pointing to Mamdani’s concentrate on counting on metropolis authorities to enhance housing affordability, somewhat than by means of partnership with the personal sector.
“Politics within the metropolis proper now, I’d say, it’s scary,” Fetner stated on the gala. “It’s not about freezing the rents.”
Out of the gates
As soon as sworn into workplace, Mamdani hit the bottom operating.
On his first day as mayor, Mamdani signed an govt order reviving town’s dormant Workplace to Defend Tenants and appointing renter activist Cea Weaver as its director.
The selection to faucet Weaver, seen as an adversary by many within the landlord contingent, was a regarding one for lots of the metropolis’s multifamily gamers. Weaver, beforehand the director of New York State Tenant Bloc and Housing Justice for All, performed a central function in passing the 2019 lease legal guidelines, which house owners of rent-stabilized properties credit score for the misery plaguing their portfolios.
The scrutiny intensified days later when a number of of her outdated tweets resurfaced in information articles, together with one calling homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy.” (Weaver later backtracked on the feelings expressed in her earlier posts in an interview with NY1’s Errol Louis, describing the language within the tweets as “inelegant” and “regretful.” )
Weaver “appears fairly dedicated to destroying property rights,” Hungerford stated.
Hungerford additionally criticized her earlier feedback advocating for extra city-owned housing by means of the New York Metropolis Housing Authority, or NYCHA, which he referred to as the “absolute poster little one for New York Metropolis’s worst landlord.”
“There’s a elementary disconnect between this administration proper now and actuality, and if that’s who Mamdani goes to nominate and that’s their perception, it’s so removed from real looking,” Hungerford stated.
Two days later, Mamdani and Weaver introduced town’s intention to intervene within the authorized battle over 5,000 rent-stabilized flats owned by one of many metropolis’s largest landlords, Joel Weiner’s Pinnacle Group — a portfolio which was then set to be auctioned off on Jan. 8. The administration tried to pause the sale to the proposed purchaser, Summit Properties, over issues that the agency wouldn’t have the ability to make the required repairs — a bid a chapter decide in the end rejected. Summit, which had agreed to pay roughly $450 million for the portfolio, was confirmed as the customer every week later.
Then got here the “Rental Ripoff” hearings announcement. On his first Monday on the helm of town, Mamdani signed one other govt order instituting the hearings geared toward permitting tenants to air their grievances with landlords in entrance of a bunch of metropolis companies together with Weaver’s. The order mandated that hearings in each borough be underway inside Mamdani’s first 100 days in workplace, with the purpose of manufacturing a report based mostly on the content material.
Although the order talked about landlords and property managers as potential audio system, as The Actual Deal’s Erik Engquist identified in a column, “that’s sort of like inviting sheep to a gathering of wolves.” The administration intends the hearings to be a spot for renters and activists to share tales of “unlawful, unfair, abusive, misleading, or unconscionable landlord practices” — doubtless setting the stage for future coverage choices, reminiscent of freezing the rents for rent-stabilized properties, a purpose Mamdani has been vocal about attaining (although, the authority to take action rests with the Hire Tips Board).
“Lots of this comes off as very theatrical and never policy-based,” Burgos stated. “It’s merely a public show to construct up help for his purpose of a lease freeze come June. He is aware of the numbers received’t help a lease freeze, so he must create the story arc.”
When Mamdani was a no-show at REBNY’s January gala, actual property gamers took observe.
“The truth that our mayor is just not going to be right here tonight, I believe, is incorrect,” James Wacht, founding accomplice and managing principal of Lee & Associates, stated on the gala. ”It’s necessary for the politicians to embrace the actual property trade. We pay the payments.”
The Soloviev Group’s Michael Hershman instructed TRD the mayor’s absence was a “missed alternative.”
“It’s in the perfect pursuits of the actual property neighborhood and the mayor to have the ability to sit down and discuss what’s finest for town, what’s finest for the individuals of town,” he stated. “And if we try this with sort of an open thoughts, I believe we will discover widespread floor.”
Additionally on the gala, David Falk, president of Newmark’s tri-state area, expressed concern a few breakdown in communication between town and actual property.
“We’re not adversaries,” he stated. “Overlook what was occurring through the operating for workplace and the completely different candidates, the actual property trade simply needs somebody that may be their advocate.”
Friends, enemies or frenemies?
What do you name a builder who hasn’t began accumulating lease? A developer. And for now, it seems that distinction nonetheless gives them with cowl from Mamdani.
“We’re very optimistic about this administration’s actual concentrate on inexpensive housing. I believe it’s the clearest concentrate on inexpensive housing we’ve ever seen,” stated David Schwartz, co-founder of Slate Property Group, nodding to the appointments of Bozorg and Tigani as constructive indicators.
Whereas landlords are as soon as once more again within the sizzling seat, the mayor seems rather more keen to have interaction with town’s builders. He’s acknowledged a number of occasions that town is in determined want of extra housing, and has even relaxed his earlier views that the one option to construct extra housing is by working with nonprofit builders to assemble city-owned properties.
“At first we have been nervous, however I give him a number of credit score,” Schwartz stated. “I don’t suppose a number of politicians try this and alter their opinion, even once they notice they might have stated one thing incorrect. I believe a few of them double down.”
Mamdani’s tentative friendliness is completely different from earlier administrations, reminiscent of Mayor Invoice De Blasio’s, which equated growth with gentrification and infrequently vilified builders.
“If we take a look at the story arc of Mayor Mamdani’s major marketing campaign till in the present day, there definitely has been a moderation, particularly when it comes to the event of housing and the function of personal trade,” Burgos stated.
Bozorg and Tigani did present as much as the gala, signaling that hope is just not misplaced when it comes to the trade having a seat on the desk.
“I’m the optimistic one within the room,” stated developer Spencer Levine, president of RAL Firms. “Because the inauguration, there undoubtedly has been a distinct projection of the dialog and angle, however which may simply be him feeling his floor. It’s approach too early to see.”
Nonetheless, others say an understanding between town and the trade received’t occur if the mayor doesn’t tone down his rhetoric.
“He must pivot and cease campaigning and begin governing,” Peter Rigardi, chairman and president of JLL’s tri-state area, stated on the REBNY gala.
“His mission for inexpensive housing is a noble and wanted one, nevertheless it’s not going to occur with simply energetic, younger concepts,” he added. “He must marry that with expertise and the suitable capital that makes these kinds of tasks occur.”
Kathy Wylde, the previous head of the Partnership for New York Metropolis who helped set up preliminary conferences between the mayor and trade leaders, stated the administration remains to be getting up and operating, and that the primary few actions have been doubtless simple fixes that may sign to his base that he’s staying true to his phrase.
Nonetheless, she emphasised that the administration is certainly not closed off to the thought of continued conferences with actual property stakeholders, and reported that members of the administration have stated that they’ll doubtless open their schedules round March, after they end hiring and town finances proposal.
“This administration actually needed to marketing campaign till the polls closed on Nov. 5, so to be honest, they didn’t have the standard window in regard to key appointments,” Wylde stated. “My message is simply give it a little bit time.”
— Lilah Burke contributed reporting
