What Mamdani—and Everyone—Gets Wrong About Real Estate  

New York City real estate is a contact sport, so it’s easy to understand the breathlessness with which news outlets reported the kerfuffle surrounding Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate, and his $2300-a-month rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, Queens. 

Is the rent fair—this, after all, is New York, and living here isn’t cheap? Or is it proof that the young mayoral hopeful is the hypocrite his opponents accuse him of being, advocating or the neediest New Yorkers while himself benefiting from a perk that ought to have been reserved for the far less fortunate? 

Here’s the blunt truth: it doesn’t matter. Both Mamdani and his critics are getting it all wrong. Obsessing over rent is understandable but misguided. If you want to fix New York City housing, the only answer is boosting home ownership.

Having sold $2 billion in New York residential real estate, here’s what I still tell every single one of my clients: your apartment isn’t a place designed to keep you safe and secure and stuck in one place for the rest of your life. It’s a platform to help you grow.

Think that sounds too gauzy and poetic? Allow me to offer two numbers, then: 65, which is the percent of Americans who own their home, and 25, which is the percent of New York City’s tax revenue represented by residential real estate. Together, these numbers tell a story we used to call the American Dream: When more people own homes, they’re inspired to build communities and institutions and make other long-term communal investments, and when they do that they help the economy flourish, which, of course, benefits them right back in return. Anyone who cares about things like spending on local businesses, wealth accumulation, intergenerational wealth, and educational and health outcomes should vocally and enthusiastically support any measure that leads to more people owning their home.

Want truly progressive politics, then? Forget about the Sisyphean and frustrating effort to freeze rents, which has already been proven to generate very limited outcomes at best. Real progress should mean feeding the golden goose of real estate tax revenue, not killing it, and, in the process, making sure that more New Yorkers enjoy more opportunities and build stronger bonds by settling not into some apartment they’re too afraid to leave but into a home of their own, where they can begin to work for a flourishing future. 

That, I think, was what John Adams had in mind when he warned us that “The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." And that is what sensible policies have always tried to achieve, on both sides of the aisle, from the Homestead Act of 1862 to tax incentives and other lending programs. 

But we still have much to do if we want to make sure more and more New Yorkers move in to a home of their own. True, we already have several programs to assist first-time homebuyers and make downpayments go further. New ideas, however, including awarding tax deductions to reward saving for home ownership downpayments, deserve careful consideration and, when workable, immediate and robust implementation.

And, above all, let us stop having silly and petty rent-related conversations, or, worse, portray home owners as fat cats who are somehow enjoying ill-gotten gains. Instead, let’s pray that our mayoral candidates, in word and deed alike, focus on one clear message that benefits us all: home ownership is important, valuable, and possible for a large swath of the population, and desirable to all New Yorkers.  -Scott