Sunday Summary: Mamdani Makes Good on a Big, Big Rent Freeze

A lot of real estate professionals had hoped that much of the rhetoric coming from Zohran Mamdani when he was running for mayor last fall was just that — rhetoric.

When stuff got real, cooler heads would prevail, many believed. And while policy might be a little harder on the industry than it was under, say, Eric Adams, the changes would be something real estate could live with.

That take seemed a lot less likely late last week after the Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze rents on one- and two-year leases in rent-stabilized buildings on June 25.

The day started on an inauspicious note when Christina Smyth, who had been one of the landlord representatives on the board, announced she was resigning her seat in protest.

“This year’s [Rent Guidelines Board] order was decided last year on the campaign trail,” Smyth wrote in her resignation letter. “Everything since has been theater. The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”

The board’s vote — which will affect about 40 percent of the city’s housing stock, or 1 million apartments — was not taken well by the city’s real estate advocates.

“Older rent-stabilized buildings are already struggling under rising operating costs, yet the board chose to disregard those realities,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. “This decision will mean less investment in maintenance and repairs, accelerating the deterioration of the housing stock that millions of New Yorkers call home.”

The rent freeze comes on the heels of a pied-a-terre tax Mamdani recently proposed (while singling out Citadel’s Ken Griffin) which has certainly been the object of anxiety for many in the industry.

“I think there is going to be less development,” said Stuart Saft, a partner with law firm Holland & Knight. “We’ve already reduced the amount of affordable residential development, because these geniuses don’t think that developers should be allowed to make money, and that everything should be done with union labor. So we’re really at a low point in development there. The only development that was going on was expensive condos.”

That being said, the preliminary data is not so bad.

From May 25 through June 21, 2026, there were 131 contracts signed for $4 million-plus properties in Manhattan, as per Olshan Realty’s luxury market reports, which is actually slightly better than the 126 contracts signed in 2025 during the same period.

Of course, the tax hasn’t taken effect yet. And many of the contracts signed had been in the works weeks before Mamdani made his announcement.

Still, good data is good data. And the mayor says he’s committed to more housing, which is also good.

Maybe New York can take a page from Culver City, Calif., which seems to be defying the rest of Los Angeles County in a real, sustained and extremely welcome push for more apartments. (Neighbors in Orange County are seeing action, too.)

Speaking of REBNY…

We were pleasantly surprised to learn this week that Jonathan Mechanic — super lawyer, Power 100 grandee, chairman of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson’s real estate practice, and perennial CO fireside chat host — will be taking Jed Walentas’s place on Jan. 1, 2027, at the top of the REBNY ladder as its next chairman.

Giving the nod to an attorney rather than a broker or developer is a first for the trade group. “To be the first practicing attorney elected chairman of REBNY in its storied history is one of the greatest honors of my career,” Mechanic said in a statement to CO. “I can’t wait to get to work on behalf of our members, our industry and our city.”

Of course, that was not the only personnel change in the last week. Colliers lured Justin Arzi away from CBRE (where he had been for nine years) to serve as a senior vice president on the New York capital markets team. And while they were at it, Colliers tapped company veteran Seth Hecht, who had decamped to JLL, back into the fold.

Let’s talk about retail and hospitality

“Ultimately, what customers are looking for today is the tangibility of physical retail,” said Rachel Abeles, Bloomingdale’s senior vice president for customer and revenue growth, at CO’s retail forum on June 18. “To touch, feel, smell, try on and interact with other human beings.”

Finally!

Not that we hadn’t been seeing signs of this for a while, after a long period of retail retraction, but it’s good to hear retailers say this out loud.

“Customers are not just looking to transact, they’re looking to experience, but what they’re looking for is an experience that is vibrant and warm and original,” Abeles continued. “If you go to the store and look at the fourth and fifth floors, you will see a reinvention of our [style]. We took Art Deco elements, but made them super modern by putting them in a brushed chrome. We added color, which we had never done in our stores. It sounds small, but if you go into a store that historically has been about black and white, it feels really different.”

And one also sees renewed appetite in deals. Adirondack Capital Partners just put out a report tracking 14 trophy retail properties in premier shopping corridors and found that SoHo was the most active market for property trades in the U.S. But, of course, it’s not the only corridor.

David Yurman, the luxury jewelry brand, leased the entire retail condominium at 685 Fifth Avenue, which will include a new 23,000-square-foot flagship store.

Bua Thai Ramen & Robata Grill signed a 4,840-square-foot lease at 21 East 16th Street — which was the original site of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe.

Only a block away, Korean chef Jiho Kim took 3,120 square feet at 21 West 17th Street for his new flagship restaurant, Jiho.

And we saw a ton of interesting lodging deals. Blackstone did not just one but two nine-figure hotel deals last week, having laid out $279 million to Sunstone Hotel Investors to purchase the 821-key Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San Francisco — leaning into the AI boom boosting the city’s hospitality sector of late —and Blackstone also sealed a $115 million refi for the W hotel in Fort Lauderdale.

Plus, Reef Capital Partners closed a $431 million debt package and said “Aloha” to redeveloping the Coco Palms Resort in Kauai, Hawaii — which, incidentally, is where Elvis Presley filmed “Blue Hawaii.”

Your Sunday Reading

Next week is the Fourth of July — which is always a good time to reflect on the past. (Especially when you reach a pretty momentous birthday like 250.)

But as one ruminates on what was, it’s also helpful to think about the future. Particularly who will be running things in the future.

Last week CO put out our annual Power Young Professionals issue, which highlights 75 folks under 40 who are already making their names in leasing, sales, financing, development, architecture and engineering — and which is always a nice window into the future.

Take a nice long look this Sunday at some of the names who are making deals and see what they’ve been up to — oh, and they know how to party.

May the Fourth be with you!