Eric Adams’s Exit From NYC Mayor’s Race Leaves CRE With Stark Choice
Industry leaders had soured on Andrew Cuomo after his poor primary showing against Zohran Mamdani — but now ...
By The Editors September 28, 2025 2:11 pm
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New York Mayor Eric Adams‘s abrupt Sunday announcement that he was abandoning his independent re-election campaign leaves the commercial real estate industry with a stark choice: Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani or former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the man Mamdani bested by a wide margin in the Democratic primary in June.
That loss had soured the industry on Cuomo, though any alliance between the ex-governor and CRE had always been an uneasy one. Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace in 2021 after a number of scandals and who is running for mayor on a third-party line, had famously backed a suite of tenant-friendly laws two years before that many in CRE blame for decimating the market for rent-stabilized buildings in New York City. Cuomo early on in his mayoral campaign distanced himself from those very laws.
Cuomo’s administration and legislative allies also allowed a key multifamily development incentive, the original 421a, to lapse. The industry has not exactly embraced 421a’s successors.
Mamdani has proposed his own changes to real estate regulations and oversight. Those include a freeze on rents for the city’s approximately 1 million stabilized buildings as well as construction wage requirements for certain city-backed projects. It’s unclear, though, how much of this agenda Mamdani could implement. A recent JLL white paper cautioned against fatalism within the industry.
“While presumptive Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s platform includes policies that may concern real estate investors, it’s critical to understand the actual extent of mayoral authority,” the white paper read. “Our analysis reveals that most policies affecting commercial real estate cannot be unilaterally implemented.”
That’s probably not enough to assuage an industry just short of paranoid that the left-leaning assemblyman might win.
“If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November,” Jeff Blau, CEO of developer Related Companies, emailed colleagues in September, according to The New York Times. “We cannot — and will not — let that happen.”
Meanwhile, the man Mamdani or Cuomo will succeed has proven one of the most effective New York mayors in recent history in terms of fostering development and CRE investment activity. The Adams administration’s City of Yes plan — which the City Council passed at the end of 2024 — was New York City’s biggest rezoning since the 1960s. It prioritizes housing development in areas of the five boroughs not normally targeted for such construction.
The administration also pushed through a major rezoning of much of Midtown South to foster office-to-residential conversions, and has prioritized filling in city-owned sites with new housing.
This is a developing story and will be updated …
