What Real Estate Is Watching as Zohran Mamdani Becomes Mayor

1 January 2026

For months, real estate professionals have speculated about what Mayor Zohran Mamdani will mean for the industry.

Now, these conversations aren’t hypothetical.

Mamdani was sworn in as the new mayor of New York City during a midnight ceremony Thursday by state Attorney General Letitia James. A separate public swearing-in ceremony will be held on the steps of City Hall on Thursday afternoon. Sen. Bernie Sanders will deliver the oath of office at that event.

Top of mind for owners of rent-stabilized housing is Mamdani’s campaign promise to freeze rents for regulated tenants for four years. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board decides how much landlords can increase rents on one- and two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments, though mayors have influenced the board’s decisions.

Mamdani’s pledge was complicated by Mayor Eric Adams’ last-minute appointments, though one appointee decided against serving on the board.

He has also, however, acknowledged that a rent freeze alone cannot solve the city’s housing crisis. He also wants to change the city’s property tax system and work with the state to find alternative insurance options to help owners reduce costs.

Mamdani has shown support for a lawsuit challenging the city’s property tax regime, and his administration could make changes that are being pushed by Tax Equity Now New York, the industry-backed group that filed the lawsuit. Still, broader changes, including the designation of condos and co-ops that determines how they are assessed, would require state intervention.

He also wants the state to raise corporate and income taxes to help pay for his policy priorities, both of which have faced opposition from the business community.

Mamdani has also vowed to crack down on bad landlords and to revamp the city’s Office to Protect Tenants, which was launched under Mayor Bill de Blasio but has languished over the past few years. Mamdani wants the office to identify distressed multifamily buildings with unpaid fines or unaddressed dangerous conditions and find ways for the city to take control of these buildings, either through foreclosing on the properties or cutting deals with the owners.

Though many in the industry supported former Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of the June primary, some were heartened by Mamdani’s recognition of the private sector’s role in addressing the housing crisis.

After Mamdani’s win in November, David Kramer, president of Hudson Companies, told The Real Deal that when he and other affordable housing developers met with Mamdani, the mayoral hopeful assured them that he wasn’t running to punish landlords.

“In our conversations with him, he struck me as somebody that was going to be practical,” Kramer said at the time.

The new mayor has said that he wants to build 200,000 units of new affordable housing over the next decade. Some were concerned that last-minute action by the City Council would hurt his ability to execute that plan. Specifically, housing groups worried that a package of bills that set new requirements for the kinds of housing the city finances would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s budget needs.

But in his final hours as mayor, Eric Adams vetoed those measures as well as the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA. It’s unclear whether the next City Council speaker will try to override the vetoes on these measures. Mamdani has been supportive of COPA, so he could also encourage the City Council to approve a new version of the policy instead.

The new administration is also tasked with implementing the housing ballot measures approved in November that create new pathways for housing projects to be approved. The changes allow certain projects to avoid City Council approval and for an appeals board to reverse the Council’s rejection of others. Adams has left behind other initiatives for Mamdani to potentially pick up, including the so-called Manhattan Plan, which recommends different ways of ramping up construction in the borough.

Mamdani is still filling out his administration, but has appointed Adams administration alum Leila Bozorg as his deputy mayor of housing and planning. He also named Ahmed Tigani, who has served as acting HPD commissioner under Adams, as his Department of Buildings commissioner. He has not yet announced who will lead HPD or the Department of City Planning.

In the coming months, the new mayor’s policy priorities will become clearer, as will his ability to deliver on campaign promises as he navigates working with the City Council and state legislature.