The ‘Rich Exodus’ Was Always a Lie

The rich are not fleeing Mondani's New York According to USA Today, the great rich exodus from New York City was never anything more than right wing fairy tale mixed with realtor gossip. Since Zoran Mandani won the Democratic primary back in June, Manhattan rents have not gone up. They have gone up, rather not down. Overall, the median rent is up 7% to $4,600. In the luxury market, median rent jumped 20% to almost $12,000 a month. Median sales prices are up too, and luxury inventory is actually down 16%. As appraiser Jonathan Miller put it, if people were fleeing the city, prices would be falling. He calls the whole panic a false narrative, adding that the plural of anecdotal is not data, it's just more anecdotes. Even Donald Trump, who mocked Mandani as a little communist, walked it back after their White House meeting, saying, we agree on a lot more than I would have thought. The data says it clearly. The rich are staying put. Okay, what's the real message here? If you bought into this myth that the rich are fleeing Manhattan because a socialist was taking over, you were a rube, you were a dupe. You fell for it. You became the pawn of right wing political interest who make their living by scaring you and the rest of the world that the sky is falling because commies are taking over. The rich are still in Manhattan and they're going to stay there. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. Now this is an interesting issue to me, having lived in New York City, having known a lot of people who left New York City. I left New York City not because of the political leadership of the city. About 10 years ago, I left just because I was starting a family and wanted a house and more space. But this idea that everyone was going to flee Manhattan and here I am down in Florida where people were spreading this myth that the Mondame was the Florida Realtor Guy of the year. It's all just bs. So part of the premise of this show is to help you fine tune your BS detector. And I don't mean to besmirch an entire profession, but I got to tell you, I've never yet met a real estate agent who was honest about, hey, you know what? This is not a good time. We're all sort of hurting. It's not a good time to buy a house, not a good time to sell a house. It's just blah. They'll never ever admit that. It's always, it's the best ever. And Florida real estate executives and brokers had this incentive to push this idea that, oh, everyone's going to come here. It's going to be great for Florida real estate. No, it's really not. Rupert Murdoch, conservative political interest, Republican interest, had a vested interest in scaring you into thinking that because Mannami uses this S word, the socialist word, as a part of his label, that crime was going to be rampant and everyone would be fleeing the city. And you know what? Not happening yet. Could it happen? Sure. But here's the thing that people don't like to admit, and you're not going to hear conservative Republicans saying this, but if you're really rich, there's no place better in the United States to be than New York City. Sure, you might want your big mansion on the water in Palm Beach. Sure, you might want a mansion in Beverly Hills. But if you're really, really rich and you got money to burn, there's no place better than New York City because they have more fancy, expensive restaurants than any other city in America. They have more fancy, expensive stores. I mean, just on a couple of blocks on Fifth Avenue, from about 56th street to 50th street, you've got every great retailer, every fancy boutique, every fancy fashion designer in the world. They're all there. And their 10, 20, $30,000 dresses are all there. So if you've got money to burn, you're going to spend time in New York City. Is there the occasional eccentric multi billionaire who just wants to live on the ranch like a hermit in Montana? Sure. But even most of those have a little place, a pied a terre, in New York City. They might not brag about it, but they do. So keep in mind, in American politics, it behooves one political party to constantly say that the other political party is too far left. And by left, they mean socialist, and by socialist they mean communist. And by communist, they mean Fidel Castro's Cuba, where everyone's walking around because they can no longer fix their 1957 Chevys with chewing gum. It suits. A political interest has no bearing in reality. The reality is there is a lively, active, democratic socialistic. You can use different words for it, but a democratic socialistic party in all the major G7 countries, all the major economies in the world, not to mention some smaller ones, they're fantastic places to live. If you've never been to Copenhagen, for example, or if you, for that matter, if you've never been to France and you want to demonize socialism, it's never worked anywhere, you're a fool. You're an absolute ignorant fool. I'm sorry, I don't usually use words that harsh, but Paris is a great city in part because it doesn't. It's not always in power. It's not in power at the moment. But there's an active democratic, socialist, left of center political party that has an impact on policies and takes some of the rougher edges off of capitalism. And the scare tactics of you can never have anything socialistic without completely ruining the economy and everyone starving to death is just that, it's a scare tactic. Again, here's the test. Have you ever supported a public school? Guess what, you're a socialist. The Communist Manifesto called for public school. Public funding in public schools before that was a thing. In the United States or elsewhere, if you've ever called for a public road, a public street where you didn't personally have to go hire a cement company or a car, a contractor to build a road, you're for socialism. That's what public roads are. So it's time a lot of people grew up and realized in America, it's a laboratory of democracy. You can have centrist running things. You can have people right of center. You could sometimes have a libertarian, you could sometimes have someone left of center, sometimes a little bit further left. And the whole system doesn't collapse. It can still be a great country to live in. Let's look at some more of the facts. So I mentioned to you, in Manhattan, the median rent is up 7% in the last 4,000 in the last few months. That's up to $4,600 a month. It sounds like a lot to you where you live. It is a lot of money. Having lived in Manhattan for a huge percentage, arguably a majority of my adult life, it's a lot of money. There's no doubt about it. I've had to pay more than that. The luxury rental market is up 20%. That's $12,000 a month. Now, you can make a case of, hey, Mandani said he was going to fix affordability. Seems like he's making it worse. If you want to make that case, you can. But don't kid yourself that's not an argument that it's so he's turning everything into such a horrible hellhole. All rich people are fleeing the city. It's just not true at the moment. Again, the last few months since Mandani won the Democratic nomination, it was obvious to all he was going to be the next mayor. Here's what we've seen. The the luxury inventory is down 16%. That's right. The rich people are not selling their houses. They're not moving out. Rich New Yorkers move out at one quarter of the normal rate according to the most recent data from USA Today. So even Trump is saying that Mandani seems like he'll do a good job and he's bowling for him. Now, this guy's, as we talked about yesterday on this program, he's got some kind of super mojo charm about him. He went into the White House earlier last week on Friday, and everyone thought that Trump was going to treat him like Zelensky, treat him like the help and maybe spit on him or give him a broom and say get out of here. He didn't do that. They acted like they were best bros. He certainly acted a lot more affectionate toward Bondani than he did J.D. vance. And that's not an observation for me. That's an observation from Brian Kilmeade of Fox News. So as I said, look, I'm not always right about politics. I didn't predict a year ago that Mandani would be the next mayor of New York City, but I did predict how this hysteria of all the rich people are going to flee New York City if this democratic socialist gets elected. That, that was just hype. That was just a political clap trap designed to manipulate and fool you and get clicks and get views and get hysteria. And thus far I've been proven correct. Could I be wrong? Could we see the most massive spike in crime ever in New York City and everyone leave? It's possible. If so, I will report that to you and I will deliver a mea culpa if somehow it can be traced back to this guy. But again, let's not forget he's keeping the police commissioner, that all the conservatives, like a really, really rich white woman, an heiress that everyone seems to think has done a great job as the police commissioner in the previous administration where while crime has gone down, he's keeping her. Is he firing thousands of police officers? No. Is he going to the Rikers Island? Is he going to the city jails with a key, opening it and saying, hey everybody, I'm in, you're free now. No, he's not doing that. So I'm not here to tell you he's going to be a huge success or that his policies are the best ones. I personally don't embrace a socialistic label. I personally don't think that city owned grocery stores are really the best way to help. But I'm going to give it to you honestly and calm it like I see it and not just follow partisan claptrack that we've seen so far regarding everything around this guy. People got to chill out sometimes. The second you hear the S word, the socialistic word, a lot of people just their brains shut off and they go absolutely crazy and insane. And yet those people, if you ask them, do you ever enjoy traveling and have you enjoyed going to Switzerland or France or Denmark? Oh, yeah. Great, wonderful places. And they're not connecting the dots. All of those places have huge socialistic politicians running things from time to time and influencing policies, and it did not, in fact, ruin their economy.