Billionaire real estate investor Barry Sternlicht had some harsh words for the newly elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. Sternlicht is Chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, which has both commercial and residential holdings and joint ventures in the city, as well as its own offices in Midtown Manhattan.
Sternlicht blamed overly expensive development and management costs on unions and said he only expected it to get worse in the Mamdani administration.
“Over $100 million, every project in New York has to go union, and it’s super expensive. It leads to extremely expensive housing. And other developers have tried to cut deals with the unions, but they rule New York, and that’s one of the key reasons the blue states are so expensive and they’re so difficult to add supply of housing to,” said Sternlicht in an interview with CNBC Property Play, which will be released in full next week.
“And then the far left gets really nuts and says the tenants don’t have to pay. Well, you can’t kick them out if they don’t pay. So the neighbor finds out the neighbor isn’t paying, and they don’t pay, and the next guy doesn’t pay, and then you’re basically going to turn New York City into Mumbai.”
