Zohran Mamdani is set to be sworn in as mayor of New York at a traditional midnight ceremony on New Year’s Eve. With just hours until he takes office, there are still no signs that his democratic socialist agenda has sparked the mass exodus of rich New Yorkers his critics warned of throughout his campaign.
As Bloomberg reported earlier in the month, sales of luxury homes in Manhattan increased in November. According to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman, buyers signed contracts on 176 homes in the borough priced at $4 million or more in November, which was 25% more than the previous month. Bloomberg also notes that, according to Olshan Realty’s luxury market, more than 20 people bought homes in Manhattan in the immediate days after Mamdani’s election.
For many of the ultrarich, leaving the city would be an act of economic and social self-sabotage.
“There is no Mamdani effect,” Donna Olshan, president and founder of Olshan Realty, told Bloomberg. “The idea that people would flee New York was overblown. The numbers just aren’t bearing that out.”
CNBC reported in November, after Mamdani’s election, that Scott Rechler, CEO of real estate company RXR, said at a conference, “We’re seeing a record level of leasing in office buildings. And it’s not just for next year, it’s for 2028, 2030, 2032.” Bill Rudin, co-executive chairman of Rudin Management, another real estate company, said at that conference, “We haven’t seen any diminishment in meetings with brokerage firms.”
In what was a mixture of prediction and threat, conservative and centrist opponents of Mamdani claimed that his campaign promise to incrementally hike taxes on people making more than $1 million a year to fund new social services would drive them out of the city in droves and blow a hole in the city’s economy. But on the eve of Mamdani’s swearing-in, there is no data that suggests any such trend is emerging.
