{"id":63325,"date":"2025-11-28T10:10:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/63325\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T10:10:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:10:16","slug":"florida-is-talking-up-big-wins-from-mamdani-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/63325\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida is talking up big wins from Mamdani victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

For months before his victory at the November 4 election, Florida politicians and real estate agents were courting fearful and disgruntled wealthy New Yorkers<\/a> who would find their lives getting a little bit harder under the leadership of Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Scott Singer, mayor of Boca Raton, went as far as placing a big, flashy ad on a digital billboard in Times Square earlier this year to convince New Yorkers to move out of the Big Apple and relocate to Palm Beach County. \u201cDear NYC, it\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me,\u201d the ad reads.<\/p>\n

Now that 34-year-old Mamdani is officially New York City\u2019s mayor-elect,<\/a> many in the Sunshine State are sure that a new wave of migration from the Northeast is about to happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of realtors who are getting a lot of calls from people from New York\u2014something is happening. I cannot tell you what is the intensity, or how many people would be moving\u2026 but I guess, in a couple of months from now, we are going to see things happening,\u201d Pascal Nicolai, CEO of Miami-based luxury home construction company Sabal Luxury Builder, told Newsweek during a phone interview.<\/p>\n

A \u2018New Home\u2019 Waiting In Florida<\/p>\n

Jaime Sturgis, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based\u00a0 real estate company Native Realty, told Newsweek that clients \u201cup in the Northeast\u201d started calling him right after the polls started suggesting Mamdani might win the city\u2019s mayoral election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of them at that point in time started planning essentially their departure from that state to relocate their assets down to South Florida,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I have several clients actively looking to close on properties before the end of the year,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Asked why so many New Yorkers are in a hurry to move down to Florida, Sturgis speaks of \u201cthe proverbial straw in the camel\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of his clients, he said, had been \u201ckind of one foot out the door for quite some time\u201d, with a few of them already selling a portion of their portfolio when they moved to Florida during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, at the time, they were keeping some real estate holdings in New York City. Now, he said, \u201cthey want to move everything down and they want out. So they\u2019re selling their portfolios in their entirety and they\u2019re relocating down here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of South Florida\u2014from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to Broward and Dave counties\u2014is expected to win big from this expected exodus of New Yorkers out of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

In a Zoom interview with Newsweek, Singer said that he has had \u201cthousands of people\u201d respond to the ad, which was shown in New York City and other key markets such as Chicago and San Francisco, with people checking out the Boca Raton website promoted on the digital billboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediately, we got a number of inquiries just within the first few weeks from ten different states,\u201d Singer said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen businesses come already, and we\u2019re continuing to have constructive dialogues with companies that have reached out since the election, as they want to come to a lower tax jurisdiction with a great talent base and high quality of life,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For some of these people, buying a home in the Sunshine State almost comes at no cost. \u201cYou have to imagine, you can buy a house in Florida by sending money on taxes on a ten-year payout, and you have the house for free,\u201d Nicolai said.<\/p>\n

Obviously, moving to Florida is not for everyone. Singer\u2019s ad, case in point, was not targeted to everyday New Yorkers, but business owners and leaders looking for corporate relocations, the Boca Raton mayor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not planning, not able and not interested in welcoming every New York resident who wants to flee the city. We\u2019re a fairly built-out city, and we\u2019re not looking to accommodate them,\u201d Singer said. \u201cBut we do have class-A office space that already exists or is under construction. That would be a great new home for some of these companies, and we have a great talent base here,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Feeding The South Florida Dream<\/p>\n

Migration from the Northeast to Florida is nothing new for the Sunshine State. Businesses have been relocating from up north and the east coast long before the latest New York City mayoral election\u2014and Singer hopes this movement will continue and even accelerate in the aftermath of Mamdani\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen substantial business growth, and we\u2019ve been a haven for business since the 1960s, when IBM [International Business Machines] had its corporate headquarters here in Boca Raton. So we have that tradition of innovation and strong punching above our weight when it comes to business has continued to attract businesses,\u201d Singer said.<\/p>\n

Boca Raton has been targeting business people working in sectors ranging from technology, financial services, fintech and medtech to health care, biotech, AI and quantum computing. But the city is also still chasing the dream of Florida becoming the so-called Wall Street of the South.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a great diversified group of financial services firms here, and with Wall Street particularly concerned about the impacts of the election, I think it\u2019s ripe for them to consider a move to our class-A office space,\u201d Singer said.<\/p>\n

The Boca Raton mayor expects to see \u201ca continued steady exodus\u201d from New York City and other places in the coming months, as well as \u201ca continued finding of new homes in Boca Raton for businesses.\u201d On his part, he said the city will continue its outreach to New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

Sturgis said the influx of New Yorkers he expects will bring \u201cbillions of dollars\u201d to the state. \u201cI have multiple clients that are moving nine-figure real estate portfolios down from New York to South Florida, who have called me and said, \u2018I\u2019m selling everything that I own in New York, and I need you to help me find assets to buy\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think that this second wave, if you will, is materially different from the first wave that we experienced during COVID. And again, people aren\u2019t relocating their residences because they already live down here, but what they are relocating is their commercial real estate portfolios. They\u2019re moving their investments down here, all of them, and they\u2019re really cutting ties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is The Hype Real?<\/p>\n

For now, there are mainly rumors circulating around real estate agents and brokers about a growth in interest among wealthy New Yorkers to relocate to Florida\u2014but not yet enough data to back them up..<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main rumors are, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s a socialist, he has all these ideas about making public transport free, he\u2019s going to set rent control<\/a> and do all these things that are going to push capital out of New York\u2019,\u201d Juan Arias, national director of U.S. Industrial Analytics at the CoStar Group, told Newsweek in a company\u2019s office in downtown Miami.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the story that is not new with Mamdani. Miami has been an inflow market for all of these states, including California, where people tend to come down here for a different quality of life and also to avoid certain taxes. That\u2019s nothing new. And I think the rhetoric around Mamdani was trying to exploit that to a different degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not that is going to turn out into a real-life influx of New Yorkers to Florida, Arias is \u201cvery doubtful\u201d about, \u201cjust given the fact that there are a lot of limitations to what he can actually do. And there\u2019s still a lot of hailwinds for the New York market,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peggy Olin, CEO of luxury real estate company OneWorld Properties, agrees that taxation is likely the main concern of \u201csophisticated investors and buyers\u201d in New York who are possibly fearful of what a Mamdani\u2019s term \u201cis going to mean for their businesses, their corporations, and their personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mamdani \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the power to increase taxes,\u201d Arias said. \u201cThere\u2019s a few layers above him that actually control that. And in reality, the one sliver that he does control, which is the rent control piece of the equation\u2014[…] that piece of the New York rental market has not been impacted historically. It\u2019s not expected to see tremendous rent growth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already had, historically, an issue with landlords [in New York City] trying to sell out of these apartments and get out because you have no return on those apartments. Typically, you want to see rent growth to justify continued investment in your residential stock. And without that, if you\u2019re capping it, that does have a significant impact on the overall housing affordability,\u201d Arias said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, the brokerage community, the real estate community, try to sell that story. \u2018Come down to Miami, we are very pro-business. We have much better tax incentives.\u2019 And that has played out in the long term,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think this was kind of like pushing it to another extreme, where I think the community down here got used to what happened during the pandemic, when a lot of New Yorkers did move down here, but then moved back after that. So trying to still play to that, like, \u2018hey, come back. Keep on moving [down here],\u201d Arias said.<\/p>\n

Olin somewhat agrees, telling Newsweek that \u201cnothing of this is new.\u201d Instead, she said while sitting in an office in downtown Miami, Mamdani\u2019s victory will likely be \u201cjust a catalyst, just an accelerator to what was already happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does Florida Need More New Yorkers?<\/p>\n

In online conversations on Reddit and X, it is easy to find Floridians complaining about the ever-growing presence of New Yorkers and other out-of-staters who have moved to the state. That is because the past several years have seen a significant growth of these communities\u2014especially in Miami and its surroundings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we go back even before the pandemic, the demographics of Miami has been in a constant churn, where we see domestic outmigration of residents here, typically lower-income residents that historically get pushed out by higher-income residents that move in instead,\u201d Arias said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not really growing in population because the New Yorkers, the Californians that move in just push out local residents towards northern Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, Georgia, and so on\u2014more affordable places to live in. That\u2019s just a fact of life, that\u2019s just how the system works,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the pandemic, with the lockdowns and the rise of remote work, this phenomenon accelerated, with \u201ca lot more New Yorkers and Californians and people from Chicago coming in and pushing more locals out.\u201d The cost of living has also increased dramatically, forcing people out of expensive cities like Miami.<\/p>\n

But Arias said that there are also benefits to locals for every wealthy New Yorker who comes down to Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want your local community completely disassembled, but, at the same time, you want the community to continue to advance in regards to having better job opportunities, new companies moving into the area,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd for that to happen, you need to have corporate relocations. And so the brokerage community, the real estate community, really wants that to continue to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

That only happens when \u201cyou have the executives, the high-level earners of those companies come down to Miami and check it out. They like it and then they decide, Okay, I\u2019m going to move my HQ down to Miami and hire tons of workers making over $100,000 a year,\u201d Arias said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that brings up the income levels of the community and allows for all of this new development that you\u2019re seeing, these new multi-family condos, luxury condos that get built.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A higher supply of luxury homes can also help everyday buyers. Renters moving up to luxury condos vacate more affordable properties, which then become available to other buyers with smaller pockets and put downward pressure on prices in the entire market.<\/p>\n

Wealthy residential property owners in the state are also clearly keen in seeing their equity potentially increase with more demand from out-of-state buyers. \u201cI think that people are really excited that their home and their prices will continue to appreciate based on demand,\u201d Olin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are extremely fortunate to be in South Florida in the sense that not only do we get the influx of the New Yorkers and other states, obviously, but also other parts of the world that are looking to South Florida as a place as a safe haven.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For months before his victory at the November 4 election, Florida politicians and real estate agents were courting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3337,28,30,29,1644,4918,14586,1508,123,4570,14594,14592,480,17601],"class_list":{"0":"post-63325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-boca-raton","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-housing-market","14":"tag-investors","15":"tag-luxury","16":"tag-miami","17":"tag-migration","18":"tag-new-york","19":"tag-new-york-city","20":"tag-real-estate","21":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}