I have not had a single person tell me that they're going to leave New York City, and I am transacting at a level that is significantly higher than before (Mamdani) was mayor, or before we knew he was going to become mayor, Elevated Team at Compass co-founder Zeve Salman told HousingWire. I have not felt a quantitative slowdown on what's going on in the market. It's been quite the opposite.
Not long after he bought the Mets for $2.4 billion, the hedge-fund baron Steven A. Cohen had a deal in mind that was several times more lucrative. He wanted to build a massive casino and resort next door to the Mets' home in Queens, Citi Field. If it worked, it would be one of the city's largest real-estate development projects in decades.
A few years ago, private-equity firm SC Hospitality took over a tennis club in the Hamptons and added pickleball and padel courts and a restaurant overseen by Billy Durney, the chef behind the upscale burger joint Red Hook Tavern. A number of new families joined, the club began hosting Sunday cookouts, and Daniel Haimovic, SC's chairman, started spending a lot of the summer there with his family, including his two elementary-school-age kids, who played tennis, padel, pickleball, and basketball at the club.
Sure, they believed in the enduring appeal of New York and dutifully recited the mantra about how resilient the real-estate market was and how it had weathered any number of crises (9/11, the 2008 recession, COVID, the mansion tax) only to emerge stronger than ever. But they'd also seen clients depart or downsize to pieds-à-terreafter the pandemic and were terrified that Mamdani's win would make others do the same.
For under a million dollars, one can find all sorts of housing configurations: park- and subway-adjacent studios, one-bedrooms hidden in carriage houses or former shoe factories, and even the occasional true two-bedroom. We're combing the market for particularly spacious, nicely renovated, or otherwise worth-a-look apartments at various six-digit price points. This week, a two-bedroom corner unit in the Financial District and an East Village loft that's perfect for a live-work setup.
