Sunday Summary: Sharp Left

Summer’s done, and the hustle of fall will soon be upon us. Part of the background noise of the season will be the elections for state and federal legislatures. That includes the New York State Senate and Assembly. 

Those august Albany chambers are about to absorb a relatively large number of Democratic Socialists — and their allies — in the same vein as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. That could have serious ramifications for commercial real estate. We’re talking retail rent control; further restrictions on raising the rent on, or vacating, rent-stabilized apartments; and a much longer moratorium on the development of large-scale data centers.

There’s also some potential good news in so many far-left pols heading up the Hudson at once: They have aggressive plans for fostering the development of much-needed affordable housing. Those plans should align with the commercial real estate industry’s own efforts (really). 

Otherwise, though, next year could bring regressive changes akin to the dreaded 2019 state housing legislation that followed lefty wins in the 2018 elections. 

Options can be a lifesaver

Speaking of affordable housing, a niche financing option for the asset class is growing in popularity. It’s called tax-exempt commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) debt. That debt can carry lower costs of capital than standard taxable CMBS or the affordable housing loans that Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac back. (For more on the state of CMBS, check out our Q&A with Trepp’s Stephen Buschbom and Andy Boettcher.)

And, apropos of both legislatures and affordable housing, there’s a lot to recommend for the CRE industry in the recently enacted 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. It’s the biggest single piece of federal housing legislation in decades, and it’s meant to foster a lot of new housing construction, particularly of the subsidized sort. 

Will it? Well, not everyone’s convinced. “There are many different things in there, but it actually does very little,” said Toby Cobb, managing partner and co-founder of 3650 Capital. “It does nothing other than make people spend money on lawyers.”

(In other federal interventionary news this week, President Trump floated nationwide tax incentives for filming movies and TV in the U.S. Most states already offer such sweeteners, but they’re often not enough on their own.) 

There was other news on the housing front this past week. That included sizable construction loans in Jersey City, N.J., and in Washington, D.C. We also broke down the busiest homebuying months in Manhattan based on sales (spoiler: we’re not in one now). And we talked at length with Reuben Brothers’ Jordana Yechiel about that firm’s housing-heavy development in posh sections of Downtown L.A. (where condos could retail in the tens of millions). 

Finally, we covered one of the largest student housing deals in the country in 2026 so far: Scion Group and Ares Management’s mid-nine figures deal for complexes in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia. 

This one’s a real yorker 

Our dear British friends are known for many things. That includes the maddeningly complex game of cricket. 

Australia-based Century Cricket Centre has picked a 14,000-square-foot spot at Thor Equities’ 25 West 39th Street near Bryant Park for its first U.S. location. That location will include indoor pitches, and is part of a planned expansion Stateside.

In another kind of retail first this week, fashion boutique Atelier signed a deal to become the inaugural tenant in the commercial part of the Straus Group’s recently finished 181 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. And fitness brand Reforming Pilates is taking 2,500 square feet for 10 years at 233 East 34th Street, while all-you-can-eat seafood chain Crab House — it better be all you can eat! — is opening its fourth location at 11 East 13th Street. 

And, to better understand how these stores and restaurants use technology to site such new locations, you’ll want to check out this deep dive into the latest in location intelligence. 

Office got in on the leasing action, too, this week. 

In the biggest deal of the week, Vornado Realty Trust nailed down the city’s Human Resources Administration for another 18 months for its 174,186-square-foot footprint at 260 11th Avenue. In the week’s second-biggest office lease, Related Companies found an anchor tenant for its future 625 Madison Avenue in global investment house General Atlantic. The firm will be taking more than 150,000 square feet at the 53-story office tower slated to open in 2029.

Also this week, hedge fund Vestal Point Capital took 12,139 square feet at Rockrose Development’s 11 East 26th Street, and fintech firm Stash stashed themselves in Spear Street Capital‘s 641 Avenue of the Americas with a 12,322-square-foot lease. 

Meanwhile, out in L.A., CBRE-owned Industrious continued its expansion tear. 

And, down in South Florida, the ever-prolific Stephen Ross’s Related Ross closed on a $28.3 million deal to acquire land for a major open-air, mixed-use development in Wellington that will almost certainly include office. The similarly prolific Adi Chugh’s Tyko Capital loaned $322 million to Integra Investments for it to build out a West Palm Beach marina into a sizable mixed-use project. 

There were also notable hotel and warehouse sales in South Florida this past week, and a lawsuit settlement cleared the way for Two Roads Development to start building its 55-story, Edition-branded luxury condo in Miami’s Edgewater. 

In the same vein of a mammoth project advancing, one of Washington, D.C.’s largest office-to-residential conversions — that of 1990 K Street NW — secured $175.6 million in construction financing, plus a new majority partner in an entity managed by MetLife Investment Management. 

Speaking of luxury condos, we also got to peek at the ground-up project at 44 West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. Bring your checkbook. And, outside the luxury end but not exclusive of it, we got into the granular real estate repercussions of stubbornly high mortgage rates. 

From the folks who brought you the weekend

Organized labor is an essential part of the commercial real estate industry, especially in major markets such as New York. Labor Day tomorrow honors the contributions of such unions. 

It also honors work in general — the get-up-and-get-on-with-it ethos that powers so much of what goes on in real estate and the wider economy. (Speaking of which, did you see the latest job figures? Best prepare for an interest rate hike.) 

So we end this week’s summary with a profile of two workers in the industry named David — David Welsh and David Schonbraun — who have built their GreenBarn Investments into a go-to lender and operator for the more complicated deals and scenarios. 

Stay safe out there!