Zohran Mamdani secured a mayoral election victory in New York City on Tuesday, defeating the state's former governor and an underdog Republican candidate.
Now it's time to see whether Mamdani can actually get city and state lawmakers on board with his plans for addressing the city's housing crisis, real estate agents told Homes.com.
Mamdani rose in political prominence earlier this year when he campaigned on a platform that vowed to freeze rent increases for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized units, while raising taxes on wealthy residents who earn at least $1 million per year. However, brokers in New York said it's important for residents to understand that Mamdani cannot make those plans happen overnight.
"For Mamdani to execute any of his plans, he will have to get City Hall and New York State [lawmakers] to play the game," Mukul Lalchandani, a Manhattan real estate agent at Undivided, told Homes.com. "That is a tall order that will take mediation and cooperation. In reality, you will likely see a more moderate approach to anything that can pass, if at all."
But apart from electing Mamdani, New Yorkers also voted yes on three ballot proposals on Tuesday that effectively eliminate the city council’s power to approve certain housing projects. Proposal 2, for example, creates a faster two-track process for approval for publicly financed affordable housing developments and eliminates the city council’s requirement for final approval.
Proposal 3 gives the city a faster review process for land use projects, particularly those that would prepare the city for extreme weather events. Prop 3 takes away the city council’s final approval, which could take up to seven months, and replaces it with a 90-day approval timeline in which a borough president and the city’s planning commission give the final sign-off.
Finally, Proposal 4 establishes an affordable housing appeals board comprising the mayor, the city council speaker and the president of the borough where an affordable housing project is under city review. The three-member appeals board could veto the city council if councilmembers were to reject plans for an affordable housing development.
All five boroughs need more affordable homes
Mamdani, 34, becomes mayor of the nation's largest city and faces the challenging task of increasing housing stock across the five boroughs. Production has not kept up with demand.
Mamdani's rent freeze plan captured the attention of voters, but he "faces a pivotal test" of building enough housing that all New Yorkers can afford, said Mable Ivory, an agent at Real Broker.
"A rent freeze is a short-term relief for those lucky enough to already have stabilized apartments, but it does little to fix a supply crisis decades in the making," Ivory told Homes.com. "New York’s vacancy rate for affordable housing is at a 50-year low, and there are only 35 affordable units for every 100 low-income households."
Jessica Chestler, an agent at Douglas Elliman, said Mamdani faces another tall task: shaping a housing market that's fair and consistent for homebuyers seeking an affordable place to live, brokers who want to help in that process, and developers who want to continue building in the Big Apple.
"If Mayor Mamdani can balance affordability with responsible development, that’s a win for the city," Chestler told Homes.com. "There’s a real opportunity to modernize zoning and incentivize more housing production without stifling private investment."
Agent calls predictions of mass exodus exaggeration
In the months leading up to the election, New York real estate agents warned that a Mamdani win could lead to a mass exodus of wealthy individuals to states like Texas or Florida because those residents would not want to pay the increased property taxes the incoming mayor seeks to impose. About 9% of current New Yorkers said they would leave the city if Mamdani won, according to a poll JL Partners conducted for the Daily Mail.
New Yorkers likely will not flee the city en masse because "actual migration is smaller and slower," said Daniel Ickowicz, CEO of Florida-based Elite International Realty. Days after an election, everyone's emotions typically spike, "but we won't see a stampede. People don't move on headlines."
"The various numbers being thrown around about people leaving New York are exaggerated," Ickowicz told Homes.com. "We’ve seen claims of up to a million New Yorkers planning to leave the state. We must understand that there’s a big gap between feeling frustrated after an election and actually packing a home, changing schools, and relocating a business. Intentions are cheap but moves are costly.