Predictions of a rich-person stampede out of New York after Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win have not materialized. Instead, the city’s top-end property market is heating up, and the so‑called “Mamdani effect” is increasingly being used to describe renewed appetite for living and investing in New York rather than a rush for the exits.
Luxury contracts, trophy condo purchases, and fresh corporate commitments all point in the same direction: the wealthy are not fleeing the Big Apple, they are doubling down on it. I see a political narrative colliding with hard numbers, and the numbers are telling a story of people moving in, upgrading, and competing for scarce high‑end homes.
How a political scare story became the “Mamdani effect”
The phrase “Mamdani effect” started as shorthand for a supposed exodus of affluent New Yorkers spooked by a democratic socialist mayor promising higher taxes and expanded public services. Early in the campaign, critics warned that Zohran Mamdani’s platform, including ideas like free buses and universal childcare, would send high earners scrambling for the suburbs or out of state. That narrative hardened into a kind of folk wisdom long before anyone checked whether people were actually packing up their penthouses.
Some of the earliest attempts to quantify this fear leaned on a single poll that suggested wealthier New Yorkers were “quietly eyeing up alternative locales” as Zohran Mamdani led in the race. That survey helped cement the idea that the city’s tax base was on the verge of collapse, even as later reporting showed the opposite: high‑end buyers kept signing contracts, and the “effect” that stuck was not flight but fresh demand for New York addresses.
What the luxury numbers actually show
Once the votes were counted and Mamdani moved from candidate to mayor, the most concrete test of the scare story came from the luxury sales ledger. Instead of a slump, Manhattan’s top tier saw a jump in activity, with contracts for multimillion‑dollar homes rising rather than falling. I read that shift as the clearest rebuttal to the idea that the city’s wealthiest residents were staging a quiet walkout…