Scott Rechler, Chairman and CEO of RXR, and Bill Rudin, Co-Chairman of Rudin Management, speak at CNBC's Delivering Alpha event in New York on November 13, 2025.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's views have raised fears that there will be an exodus of business and capital from the city. But two of the city's top commercial real estate executives say that's simply not true, based on leasing activity and new construction investments made, with no setbacks in plans since it became clear that Mamdani would win, and by the Democratic Socialists' official election.
“New York City is back,” RXR CEO Scott Rechler said Thursday at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in New York. “The people who work here live here, they feel the energy, they have the conviction and they have every right,” he said.
“In our business, we are currently seeing CEO after CEO getting involved in the city,” said Rechler. “We are seeing record levels of office leasing. And not just for next year, but for 2028, 2030, 2032,” he added.
“We will close over 40 million square feet of commercial office leases later this year,” said Bill Rudin, co-executive chairman of Rudin Management. “Businesses grow here,” he said. “We have not seen a decline in meetings with brokerage firms,” he said of activity since Mamdani’s election. “People always say, 'Any impact?' Nobody put down their pen. Nobody calls the moving trucks. “Companies expand and take up space,” Rudin said.
A good example: hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities, who is known for openly expressing his conservative political views. Rudin, along with Steve Roth and Vornado Realtyand Griffin break ground on a new two-million-square-foot office building at 350 Park Avenue. “Ken is committed and will employ more people at 350 Park than in Miami,” Rudin said. And although the plans predated Mamdani's ascension, Rudin noted that they had recently applied for a building permit and Griffin is a partner on the project, “so he's moving forward, very excited about it and heavily involved in the design and development of the project. … What's that like?” Rudin added.
RXR just signed a 300,000-square-foot lease with a law firm that is moving in 2029, and Rechler noted that the firm came back last week after the election and said it needed to expand by another 200,000 square feet. JPMorgan's new building already needs seating for an additional 5,000 employees, on top of the 10,000 it can already hold.
Rechler noted that his company already has an anchor tenant for a 2.8 million-square-foot project that will replace a Hyatt hotel in 2031-2032. “People believe in New York,” he said. RXR has $7 billion in project financing, and “you don't get that if people don't believe in the future of New York,” he added, although he said that might require “a little bit of a longer view.”
But even now, he said, after Mamdani's election, the right word for tenants in the market for high-end office space is “urgency” when signing contracts. He said he was hearing reports of companies signing leases that would normally take a year to agree to within 21 days. “This is the market…tremendous pipeline on the office side that I've never seen in my entire career, never have I seen tenant demand as strong as it is right now,” Rechler said.
“Yesterday and today we are receiving information in real time that tenants are still in the market and looking for good, quality space,” Rudin said.
One reason for the optimistic outlook in the New York real estate market is the need to attract and retain young professional talent.
“The people who are supposed to work in the companies are here in New York City,” Rudin said.
“Every young professional wants to be in New York,” Rechler added, citing a 1.5% vacancy rate in the city’s multifamily real estate market. “People want to be here,” he said.
Your view of the mayor – both real estate managers have met with him – is not without reservations.
“Mamdani is not necessarily in line with the capital of capitalism,” Rechler said. “That's the biggest risk. We have a guy who is a caricature, not a character, but a caricature,” he said, and that could easily lead to Mamdani being defined as a socialist with no experience, based only on social media knowledge, he added.
According to Rechler, there is a risk, particularly among foreign institutional investors, that could impact investments in multifamily projects in New York. “When I leave town and travel around the world, they are all very scared,” he said. “You hear 'rent freeze,' just hear that word … and maybe there's a pushback there,” Rechler said, referring to the fact that the mayor has the power to appoint officials to a board that oversees those policies.
Some institutional investors with whom RXR has spoken about making large investments in New York City “want to see how it turns out,” Rechler said, and there could be a “cooling of capital flows” among those investors, he added.
“I've been to the Middle East and Europe and the first thing people want to talk about is Mamdani,” he said. Rechler is also on the board of the New York Fed and said the topic of conversation is the same. “In the boardroom at the New York Fed they want to talk about it and their employees who travel around the world are asked how they travel.”
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The real estate CEOs both emphasized that fears appear exaggerated for a city that has survived and thrived on Covid, the financial crisis, 9/11 and Bill de Blasio's administration. They also noted that New York had a $60 billion budget at the time Michael Bloomberg was mayor. Now it's a $116 billion budget, leading them to believe that Mamdani may become more realistic in his management approach than his campaign manifesto suggests.
Rudin said the issues raised by the mayor-elect, such as housing affordability and availability, are legitimate issues “and we will try to work with him,” he said.
“When he started running there were none [mention of the] However, he added that when he became mayor, a “very liberal congressman from Greenwich Village, Ed Koch,” realized he had to move downtown to get things done. “Hopefully Mayor-elect Mamdani understands that he has a $116 billion budget to manage and manage,” he said.
Rudin noted that since Mamdani's previous election campaign, he has retreated from the position that the government should exclusively dictate housing construction and has expressed a willingness to work with the private sector. He added: “It is now our job to show him the way to create the housing we need.”
Democratic candidate for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani speaks at a campaign rally in the Manhattan borough of New York City, USA, on October 13, 2025.
Angelina in Katsani | Reuters
“What drives Mamdani's success is the same thing that drives Trump's success,” Rechler said, pointing to a disenfranchised segment of the economy, particularly among younger people who feel they won't have the same economic opportunities as previous generations. “There is frustration with big business and there is frustration with the government and they want an answer,” he said. “Both the president and now the mayor-elect have given them simple answers that, frankly, aren't really actionable in a way that's really actionable because it's a complex problem,” he said, referring specifically to affordable housing in the case of New York.
The housing affordability crisis will not be easy to solve. Rudin pointed out that Mayor Eric Adams' administration set Mamdani up for success last year by changing zoning laws in every borough, but the real estate executives both said that wages, labor unions, sustainable development policies and changes in tax rules that make it less financially attractive to construct buildings with more than 100 units are all issues standing in the way. “So it has to be a moment where workers, the governor, the city council and the mayor have to come together … if they want the housing and we need it,” Rudin said.
“I spoke to him before the election. In my opinion he is a very smart young man who is willing to listen and receive feedback on the issues,” Rudin added.
Real estate executives cited Covid-created tax incentives that allow older office buildings to be converted into residential properties as another area where they can collaborate to build affordable housing, with those incentives conditioned on buildings retaining 25% of units at affordable rents rather than market rates.
Rechler pointed out that despite Mamdani's rhetoric about taxing the rich, the reality is that New York's governor has had significant taxing authority over the city since the financial crisis of the 1970s. “Ultimately, the governor has veto power on taxes,” Rechler said. “And I had breakfast with her yesterday and she said that income taxes will not be increased under her watch.”
He added that political pressure is being placed on Gov. Kathy Hochul given her own electoral needs.
“We have a race for governor in a year, and she needs to serve as a protective wall, and if she doesn't do that, she won't be governor in a year,” Rechler said. “The governorship election will be about Mamdani.”
For now, Rechler said what is perhaps most telling about his interactions with Mamdani is a comparison to the way former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio interacted with business leaders as his star was rising.
“I met [Mamdani] “He was alone for an hour and he came in prepared, switched from the campaign mentality to the government mentality and said the right things,” Rechler recalled of a meeting in September where it was clear to him that the election result was certain. “The evidence will be on the table, but he is clear that he needs to focus on public-private partnerships. That's the only way he can build the kind of housing he wants.”
“I want to compare this to meeting de Blasio,” Rechler added. It was a meeting of 12 business leaders, he said, and the former mayor looked around the businessmen's table and said, “None of you elected me and I'm not here to serve you.” And we lived with that for eight years. This guy at least starts with, “I know I need business people to work with to be successful.”
