The Rich Promised to Flee Mamdani’s New York. They Haven’t.

Last year, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York gave rise to numerous predictions of an inevitable mass exodus of wealthy residents and businesses following his election. These predictions grew increasingly dramatic and dire after his victory in November, with business elites and their allies in the press frantically reporting on the coming out-migration to low-tax states like Florida and Texas. They termed it the “Mamdani effect.”

Nearly six months after Mamdani’s election, however, there’s enough distance to judge how those warnings have held up so far. Though only four months into the new mayor’s term, most of the evidence points to the same conclusion: the widely anticipated exodus has failed to materialize.

One of the strongest indicators of whether people or businesses are actually fleeing from a city is the housing and real estate market. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many residents really did leave New York for the surrounding suburbs and other states, the city’s vacancy rates soared and rents dropped with demand, leading to “COVID discounts” at the height of the pandemic. This trend was even more extreme for the city’s commercial real estate, where vacancy rates doubled as more companies adopted remote work and shed office space.

Today nearly every indicator points to the opposite problem: demand is running hot and supply is lagging badly, especially when it comes to housing. One of the clearest signs that New York is nowhere near an exodus is that median rents have hit an all-time high while apartment vacancies remain at historic lows. (The administration, for its part, has separate plans to address these issues, including a rent freeze on stabilized apartments along with a push to build two hundred thousand affordable units.)

The city’s commercial real estate market tells a similar story. According to real estate firm JLL, first-quarter data for commercial real estate in Manhattan shows that leasing activity has climbed for top-tier buildings in the first months of 2026, leading to a decline in vacancies as finance and tech companies compete to snatch up office space.

In a white paper shared with Fortune earlier this month, JLL further disputed the “myth of the mass exodus” after analyzing LinkedIn migration data and finding that New York remains a greater magnet for young talent and skilled professionals than Florida, which has frequently been sold in the press (along with Texas) as the “Wall Street of the South.”

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, warnings of a mass exodus have persisted and even intensified in the first months of Mamdani’s term

“The most sophisticated talent continues to gravitate toward major markets like Manhattan despite the headlines,” wrote the paper’s authors, “and any slow-down in this growth is far more likely to stem from limited space supply on the island than from a lack of demand.”

If businesses are planning to escape from New York in the near future, they certainly have a funny way of showing it. Last month, the giant developer RXR Realty filed a permit to build what will be one of the city’s largest skyscrapers at the current location of the Trump-developed Grand Hyatt Hotel. Originally planned as an eighty-three-floor office tower, the latest plan is now a dozen stories higher, indicating a strong demand for office space. According to RXR CEO Scott Rechler, who spoke with the City , brokers who work with financial companies say “their clients are growing so fast that when their leases are nearing an end they always need more space than they currently occupy.”

Several other major midtown developments are in the works, including the Citadel-backed megaproject on 350 Park Avenue and American Express’s planned global headquarters at 2 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.