That’s one hell of a markup.
Whoever moves into NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s rent-stabilized apartment in Queens will be shelling out an extra $800 — or 35% — more per month than what the socialist “nepo baby” did, The Post has learned.
The Astoria apartment — which has quietly attracted interest from potential tenants for the past few weeks — is now commanding $3,100 per month while still remaining rent stabilized, sources said.
Mamdani — who’ll be moving into Gracie Mansion with his “aloof” artist wife Rama Duwaji sometime after being sworn in Jan. 1 — caught a break during the seven years he’s rented the one-bedroom Astoria pad, paying about $2,300 because his landlord charged him a much lower rate than what was allowed by law.
The son of millionaire award-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and tenured Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani was getting what’s known as a “preferential rent” — a temporary discounted rate landlords sometimes offer on rent-stabilized apartments to attract tenants in softer markets.
But with the Big Apple rental market in shambles and rents at an all-time-high since he moved in, the next renter won’t enjoy that same benefit.
“Isn’t that just the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York in a nutshell?” said NYC Council Minority Leader Joanne Ariola (R-Queens).
“A nepo baby leaves his under-market apartment for a mansion, the price gets jacked up for the next guy, and some ill-conceived legislation forces the landlords to make an off-market listing to avoid the fees ‘progressive’ policies shoved down their throats.”
Mamdani — who was elected on promises of affordability and a pledge to freeze rent increases –confirmed to The Post last week he’s ditching his proletariat digs.
“I’m giving it up!” insisted Mamdani to a Post reporter outside the 35th Street apartment building on Dec. 20, before laughing off questions about whether he’s sad to leave and heading inside.
Adding insult to injury, Mamdani’s unit is being leased off-market — a practice that has exploded since the city’s new Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act went into effect in June.
The controversial broker-fee ban — which Mamdani himself lobbied for as a state Assemblyman — sent prices through the roof as the fee became baked into rents.
Since the FARE Act, new listings on the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Listing Service collapsed 77% as an increasing number of brokers kept exclusive listings “off market” as a way to bypass the ban, an analysis by real estate firm UrbanDigs found.
Together with the 2019 rent reforms that resulted in a number of landlords finding it more financially viable to leave rent-stabilized units vacant rather than rent them, it has put supply at an all-time low, and rents at an all-time high.
“This is exactly what New Yorkers are sick of: politicians who benefit from housing arrangements while pushing policies that make rents higher and listings disappear for everyone else,” said Councilman Robert Holden, a conservative Queens Democrat.
“It is always the same story with nepo baby communists backed by trust funds who never pay the price for the policies they impose. If Mamdani’s idea of affordable housing only works for him and no one else, then it is not affordable. It is hypocrisy.”
Mamdani faced criticism during the mayoral campaign for living in his dirt-cheap digs for years — despite his $142,000 salary as a Queens assemblyman and vast family wealth.
The socialist said he first got the pad in the so-called People’s Republic of Astoria in late 2018 when he was only earning about $47,000 a year as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor — and has claimed he didn’t know the unit was rent-stabilized.
The next year, he whined about the rent.
“Today, our 1 bedroom rent stabilized apartment in Astoria costs us $2000/month. In 1984, this same apartment cost $290.60/month. What is this, if not theft?” he raged on X in November 2019, urging his followers to check their apartments’ stabilization status and request their rent history.
Despite its good intentions, Gotham’s rent-stabilized system has become so competitive it’s been criticized for only favoring a select few – often well-connected or high earners – while distorting the broader market by pushing landlords to hike market-rate rents to subsidize stabilized units.
Mamdani’s camp did not return The Post’s calls and messages about the price of his Astoria pad.
