Sunday Summary: Can Nithya Raman Save L.A. Real Estate?

There were plenty of surprises in election `26, but one that we’ll confess to being blindsided by was the Los Angeles mayoral race.

Karen Bass is out. Nithya Raman is in.

Not that the writing wasn’t on the wall. Bass lost a huge amount of public support after the wildfires in January 2025 and never regained it. Still, one figured Bass was the relatively safe bet over a Democratic Socialist candidate whose very party name makes people in the real estate business tremble as violently as if the party were named after Voldemort.

Apparently, the other L.A. voters don’t see it that way.

But, whatever Raman’s political affiliation, her background is that of an urban planner — and she talks like someone who’d like to see, well, urban development.

“If I am elected, my first 100 days will be about getting that work underway so that our city can once again build,” Raman said while campaigning for office, and that was a message many YIMBY voters could embrace. She also pushed for greater density around transit hubs in the form of the SB 79 state law, which Bass had come out against. Raman also supported speeding the approvals process by putting the city on a clock when a proposal comes in.

That sounds… pretty good.

“Developers don’t necessarily need to agree with a mayor on every issue,” said Joshua Baum of the research firm Hilgard Economics. “But they do need predictability, consistency, and confidence that City Hall understands the economics of development.” And so far that’s what the mayor-elect has been telegraphing.

Which doesn’t mean that Raman is necessarily going to be a landlord’s mayor. She has promised increased tenant protections, and she supported the controversial Measure ULA (the tax on more expensive real estate trades).

Nor is “fast tracking” a cure-all — especially when California voters rejected Proposition 45, a state ballot initiative which would have streamlined environmental reviews. (It should be noted voters also approved $11.25 billion for affordable housing construction.)

But, to Raman’s credit, when seeing the negative effects of Measure ULA, she backtracked and urged its reform.

That willingness to shift gears is an extremely useful quality in a mayor. After all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Southern California real estate. Just taking a look at nearby Orange County — which has seen a great push toward density of late with projects like OCVibe, the Samueli family’s $5 billion mixed-use development going up in Anaheim, or the development on its way in Newport Beach and beyond — proves all the potential.

But we’ll see. Raman has the job. Now we have to sit back and play the waiting game.

Excess, thy name is Extell

We’re worried about Gary Barnett. The guy needs to see a doctor, because we’ve never seen an appetite like this on someone who didn’t have a tapeworm. (That, or they’re a trucker — but, come to think of it, old Red Barclay didn’t come out of his steak gorging so well.)

We kicked off the week learning that Extell Development laid out $18 million to Lighthouse Properties and Solil Management for the four-story 1190 Avenue of the Americas, which will be part of Extell’s planned 29-story tower that runs from a full avenue east to 574 Fifth Avenue.

The very next day we learned that Extell purchased 1645 First Avenue from Jay and Stuart Podolsky of Amsterdam Hospitality Group on the Upper East Side for $27.9 million. (No word yet on what they’re planning on doing with it.)

Did Barnett want to make it an $81 million week or something? Because he also shelled out another $34.9 million to Hartz Mountain Industries for the air rights on 36 East 61st Street and 34 East 61st Street, which would accrue to Barnett’s supertall project at 655 Madison Avenue.

We assume that the only reason Barnett didn’t make a fourth purchase was because the Outlook outage put a lot of things on hold.

Business as usual

It’s true, we did hear of one or two deals that were put on ice Thursday because of the Outlook disruption. (We were just kidding about Barnett… but who knows with that guy?)

But there were still noteworthy deals happening throughout the real estate world last week that did not involve Extell.

In Boca Raton, Fla., Related Group nabbed $177.3 million in construction financing to build a 494-unit luxury apartment building with 50 workforce units at Office Depot’s former headquarters.

Not to be outdone, a joint venture of CP Group, Georgetown Company, Acre and StepStone secured $271.5 million in financing to buy and renovate Mizner Park — a 30-acre complex consisting of 268,391 square feet of office, 276,461 square feet of retail and 293,988 square feet of apartments — near the Brightline station and the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

(These kinds of deals help explain why New York shops like MAG Partners are expanding to South Florida and hiring industry vets like Swire Properties’ Kevin Davenport to head up these offices.)

Out in Arizona, Oxford Properties Group picked up six industrial properties between Phoenix and Tempe, encompassing some 460,000 square feet, for approximately $100 million.

In Gotham, Pro-H Group plunked down $44.25 million for a parking garage at 110 East 16th Street that it’s planning to turn into a 52-unit condo development. The seller was Tishman Realty.

Farther downtown, Oppenheimer & Company took a massive 220,000-square-foot lease at RXR’s 32 Old Slip.

Sunday reads

Where do developers get their money these days? What do they think of AI and how are they using it? Do they see more safety in debt or equity?

These were some of the questions posed in CO’s annual Owners issue.

We included more owners than ever — old favorites such as Tony Malkin, Douglas Durst and Larry Silverstein, but also some newcomers like Genghis Hadi, Kevin McCrain and Jonah Sonnenborn who could opine not just on the market and their particular endeavors but who they are as a person: the last book they read; their AI platform of choice; Aaron Judge or Jalen Brunson.

The Q&As are a wonderful window into the personalities of some of the biggest names in real estate — and the whole package is worth a long, leisurely read on this mid-November Sunday.

See you next week.