Voter turnout in New York City fell from 60 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 2021. That is not a top-of-mind issue for the real estate industry, but it should be.
When few people vote, the winners represent “a sliver of the electorate,” election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder of Cozen O’Connor noted.
New York City has many heavily Democratic districts where the Democratic primary winner — chosen exclusively by Democratic voters — always wins the general election. As a result, the City Council leans more to the left than it otherwise would.
That could soon change. A commission proposing revisions to the City Charter is contemplating open primaries, where any registered voter can participate. California, Alaska and Washington, D.C., have already adopted this system.
The top two (or maybe four) finishers in the primary would advance to the general election. If the commission puts that idea on the ballot and voters approve it in November, it would be the law of the land.
Open primaries could also produce less-progressive mayors, although it’s worth noting that the current system did not stop Eric Adams, Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani from winning six of the past eight mayoral elections. And Andrew Cuomo, who is progressive or conservative when it suits him but is generally non-ideological, is favored to win the next one.
The exception was Bill de Blasio, who crushed Republican Joe Lhota in the 2013 race and cruised to re-election in 2017. He was more pro-development than the industry gives him credit for, but was generally despised by real estate for his socialist impulses.
Open primaries would do more than reverse the decline in turnout, according to Goldfeder. “Equally important is the view that, like the experience in other jurisdictions, open primaries would produce public officials who are more representative of — and more responsive to — the full electorate,” he wrote.
What we’re thinking about: Will anyone offer close to the $12.5 million asking price for a mansion at 1305 Albemarle Road in “Prospect Park South” (what I used to call Flatbush)? What kind of buyer would want a modernized 11,500-square-foot mansion with nine bedrooms, seven and a half bathrooms, six fireplaces and a 1,500-square-foot ballroom? A similar home on the Park Slope side of the park sold for $13.5 million to Poly Prep, a private school next door. Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: St. Paul, Minnesota, is paring back a rent control law. At the mayor’s urging, the City Council voted 4-3 on May 8 to exempt rentals built after 2004 from the law, which limits annual rent increases to 3 percent. Housing production has fallen by 80 percent since the ordinance was implemented in 2022.
Elsewhere…
The cost of housing in the New York metropolitan area (which includes Newark and Jersey City and a piece of Pennsylvania) rose 5.9 percent in the 12 months through April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The increase was 5.5 percent for rent and 6 percent for home ownership. Everything else combined went up only 2.8 percent.
Of all the costs tracked by the agency, the only two that went up more than housing was entertainment (by 9.3 percent) and meat, poultry, fish and eggs (6.3 percent, largely because avian flu raised the price of eggs).
Closing time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Wednesday was $12.7 million for a 6,306-square-foot townhouse at 308 West 88th Street on the Upper West Side. Deanna Kory of The Corcoran Group had the listing.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $7.2 million for a 4,800-square-foot, mixed-use property at 88 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Greenbrook Partners sold the property to Freestone Property Group. In a separate transaction between the parties, Greenbrook Partners sold 168 Sumpter Street in Stuyvesant Heights for $4.1 million.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $35 million for a 5,603-square-foot condominium unit at 152 Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. Adam Modlin and Andrew Nierenberg of The Modlin Group have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was for a proposed 37,670-square-foot, 57-unit residential property at 155 Beach 30 Street in Far Rockaway. Leandro Dickson filed the permit on behalf of developer Herman Jacob.
— Matthew Elo
