David Kramer

Have you refinanced anything in 2022? How difficult/easy was it?

We’re in the home stretch of refinancing one of our residential mortgages, and the real pain and suffering has been seeing how expensive our interest rate cap now costs.

There’s a lot of Class B and C office in NYC. If you could lay your hands on them at a really great price, what would you do with them?

Convert them into a global pickleball arena.

What market outside of NYC do you like and why?

We’re starting construction on two ground-up new rental buildings in Westchester — in Pelham and Portchester. Why? Thanks to the New York State Legislature, which has basically outlawed market-rate rentals in New York City, we started looking elsewhere. Not to mention these are welcoming cities that could use a lot more rental inventory.

There’s a midterm election this year. How closely are you following, and do you think the national political climate will have an effect in New York?

Since we live in a one-party state, all the election action already happened in June and August. I’m following the national midterms extremely closely. … It’s only our democracy at stake.

How many days per week are you in the office?

Me, five.

NYC apartment rents have reached never seen levels. How much further can it go? How does the housing squeeze play out?

Rents are very high — which is great if you’re a NYC landlord and less fun if you’re trying to help a family friend find a one-bedroom apartment for less than $3,000. And the 421a pause is not helping the situation by not increasing our supply. As usual, there’s a bifurcation in the market — market rents are so high, and rent-stabilized apartments have been starved of meaningful escalations. I see rents staying high until there’s more inventory or we have a deep recession that impacts NYC job numbers.

ESG: fad or fixture?

Sustainability, equity, inclusion … these are important values that our society has been slowly committing to. They’re certainly not becoming less important.