The NYC Landlords Most Worried About Zohran Mamdani

Ben Carlos Thypin (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, I don't want the podcast to be like an entirely New York City focused podcast, but like in our defense, not only do we live here, but you know, what happens in New York City, it has problems and it has challenges that are seen really all around the world. So it's not terrible to do a few episodes related to, you know, what's happening around in our neighborhood.

Tracy Alloway (0:46)

I don't think it's terrible at all. And in fact, one specific area where New York really does have national, maybe even global relevance is in the housing arena, right? So we know New York City has a shortage of housing. People have been trying to come up with ways to improve that, build more supply for a long time and also lower rents. And so that has, you know, implications for a lot of other cities and places that might also be capacity constrained.

Joe Weisenthal (1:15)

Totally. I mean, like, New York is sort of an egregious levels of housing on affordability, but every city around the world, I think every city that's booming has some challenges of affordability and building more, at least in the West, but I sort of think basically everywhere. And so people always talk about trying to solve it, et cetera. Anyway, of course, past Odd Lots guest, Zohran Mamdani has his proposals for how to address housing affordability, including a rent freeze on a significant chunk of the housing stock in the city. And so we sort of need to get a sense of what that means and what the implication is for business. Weather could work.

Tracy Alloway (2:00)

Well, the broader theme here, I guess, is the role of the public sector in the private market, right? If we want to get really, really conceptual with this, that's basically what we're talking about.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

Yeah. And of course, Mamdani has a slew of proposals and ideas, free buses, faster buses also, his public grocery store trial, et cetera. But you know, we did that recent episode with Kathy Wilde, the head of the Partnership for New York, which represents a lot of major employers in the city. I'm sure they're anxious about him for a number of reasons. But she said within their community, it's really the real estate industry that is the most freaked out, so to speak.

Tracy Alloway (2:39)

Yeah, and I'm really interested in this because people talk about the real estate industry as the sort of monolith, but of course it isn't, right? There's residential, there's commercial, there's luxury, there's more affordable. So I wanna dig into this a bit more and understand exactly what the concerns are and whether they're coming from different parts of the real estate network.

Joe Weisenthal (3:01)

Yeah, and then there's, you know, even within real estate, there's brokers and then there's developers who are separate from landlords, et cetera, anyway. We do have the perfect guest, someone we've had on a few times. Every time New York City Real Estate is in the news, a guy we like to chat with, we are going to be speaking with Ben Carlos Thypin. He is the founder of a firm called Quantierra, which analyzes real estate. He is also a New York City landlord and broker. Interesting ideas.

Tracy Alloway (3:28)

Is that the most, like, hated demographic in all of New York?

Ben Carlos Thypin (3:32)

Yes.

Joe Weisenthal (3:35)

Thanks for coming back on the show, Ben.

Ben Carlos Thypin (3:37)

Thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:38)

Kathy Wilde, when we talked to her, did say that the real estate industry is the, of all of the sectors of the economy, the most anxious. What specifically, you know, who's really anxious? Or what about Mamdani's sort of vision? Most sends chills down the spine of landlords or other players in the real estate industry.

Ben Carlos Thypin (4:01)

Well, I mean, I think the reaction to Mamdani is actually not that different from the reaction to Bill de Blasio 8 years ago when he came in, or excuse me, 12 years ago. I think it's been amplified by the political environment we're in, Mamdani's political identity, his race, his ethnicity and religion. But what scares these people, I think, the most, and when I say these people, I mean the people that are vocalizing their fear, which I think don't necessarily speak for every portion of the real estate industry as Tracy pointed out. I think what most scares them is that Mamdani's premise of city management does not revolve around them. This was a major issue during the de Blasio administration that the press covered a lot where de Blasio, despite appointing some real estate friendly commissioners and generally having a pretty good administration that was pretty good for real estate, he wasn't in the habit of kissing the ring and showing up to their galas and calling on them and stroking them in a way that, in contrast, Eric Adams, the current mayor, has been very good at doing. I think a lot of this is meta feelings about their place in the city, their influence in city hall, and depending on the policy, there could be varying degrees of tenuousness to actual policy and market implications.