Mayor Zohran Mamdani's new business advisory council has 15 members, drawn from health care, restaurants and real estate, and Scott Rechler took one of the seats.
He is against rent control, against raising taxes and against city-run grocery stores, which covers most of what the mayor ran on. He joined anyway, and his account of the first months is that the city has held up better than the people forecasting an exodus expected.
"We're not going to always agree on everything, but I'd rather have a seat at the table and engage."
Rechler is chairman and chief executive of RXR, the New York property company, and a director of the New York Fed's board of governors, so he is inside both the rates argument and the housing one.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 7 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Scott Rechler, chairman and chief executive of the New York property company RXR, a director of the New York Fed's board of governors and a member of the mayor's new business advisory council
🎙️ Hosts: Becky Quick, Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who anchor CNBC's Squawk Box
📰 Published: 1 September 2026 on CNBC (Squawk Box)
🔴 YouTube | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 10 min
Key Takeaways
He would have joined the council under any mayor, and says he is not a surrogate for this one His test is whether being in the room changes an outcome, not whether he agrees with the program
The predicted flight of people and capital from New York has not shown up in his business More apartments sold, more office leases signed, more graduates arriving
Two policy changes followed calls he made, on homeless encampments and on office conversions
He is against rent control, against tax rises and against city-run grocery stores His line is that New York has a spending problem rather than a revenue problem
Raising short-term rates will not bring long-term rates down while the AI build-out runs Real estate prices off the five- and ten-year, which he says is now moving on its own
1. Why He Joined the Council
The show opened on the council itself: 15 members, chief executives in health care, restaurants and real estate, Rechler among them, and his own point that he would have accepted under any mayor as a civic duty rather than as a supporter.
He treats the choice as inside or outside, not for or against. "Yeah. No, and I've always taken that view. Right? I mean, I love the city."
"We're not going to always agree on everything, but I'd rather have a seat at the table and engage." "I think that, you know, being able to share your opinion, try to share ideas and hopefully influence outcomes is the key."
2. Poetry, Then Prose
Asked whether the mayor's personal charm explained his conciliatory tone, or whether he had actually made progress on business concerns, Rechler went back to their first meeting.
The meeting happened almost a year ago, days after the primary. "You know, I met the mayor right after the primary almost a year ago today." The mayor came to his office on the Friday before Labor Day weekend
The frame he offered the mayor came from a former governor. "We spent an hour and I reminded him of what Mario Cuomo said, that you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose."
His judgment is that the governing has been more conventional than the campaign. "And what I think we've seen is him moving more on governing in prose and being more constructive, his administration much more available than people would have anticipated." The specifics he cited were keeping the police commissioner, appointing Tony Shorris to run the city's economic development arm, and a team he called responsive on homelessness
"So I think the image and the headlines about it isn't really what's happening on the ground."
3. The City Is Not Emptying
The claim that carried the segment. "the city is doing better than any of us anticipated, this whole view that people are going to be fleeing the city hasn't really transpired"
His evidence is transaction volume rather than sentiment. "As people have said, more apartments are being sold, more office leases are being signed, more people from graduating colleges want to come live and work in New York, the best and brightest from around the country in the world."
A host pushed back on the logic rather than the facts, noting that things happening at the same time are not necessarily causing each other, and that nobody gets to see the counterfactual in which the city did even better
4. He Told the Mayor Directly
The show asked whether the mayor's rhetoric on Israel has contributed to rising antisemitism, and whether Rechler had been talked round.
He did not soften the objection. "And listen, I've told him directly that his anti-israel rhetoric is concerning and could lead to anti-semitism and other factors here."
What moved him was conduct rather than argument: the mayor meeting rabbis, trying to engage, trying to educate himself. "And to me, that is even more of a reason to be engaged."
The principle came with a story. "In 2017, I had the honor to escort Martin Luther King the Third, to meet with then elect President Trump." King told him how much pressure he was under from colleagues not to attend "And he said, because my father always said, then when there's differences, is the most important time to have discussions." "At the end of the day, disagreement doesn't mean disengagement. It means you engage more."
The host's verdict on the arrangement was two words: "Trust but verify." Rechler said he would monitor it closely and do the best he can
5. Long Rates Run on Their Own
Asked what it means for real estate if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in September or soon after, Rechler pointed at a different part of the curve.
Property is priced off medium-term government borrowing costs, not the Fed's overnight rate. "Well, as you know, real estate in particular is more sensitive to the five and ten year, and that seems to have a life of its own right now." The question he says the Fed and every economist is working on is whether those yields have detached from policy altogether, or whether raising short-term rates could still slow them or slow inflation
On the Treasury's recent interventions, which have brought yields down some, he declined to take a side. "I'm not going to comment specifically in favor or not in favor." He added, "I think the markets speak for what the markets speak for." "And maybe the market is the only thing that can actually tame some of those perspectives." The perspectives he named were politics and populism
He split the rise in long rates into a bad cause and a good one. The deficit is the bad one. The other is the money going into data centers and the physical plant behind artificial intelligence "And, you know, that is an extraordinary infrastructure buildout that we've never experienced of a scale like this." He does not expect it to go away
The conclusion is a warning about what the Fed can and cannot fix. "I mean, my personal view is I don't think raising short term rates is going to stop the rise in the long term rates."
6. Where the Mayor Listened
Sorkin asked for a case where the mayor had taken a suggestion from the council or from Rechler himself. He gave two.
Homeless encampments. "One was when he first came into office, they were changing policies on homeless encampments and were trying to focus first on social services being the point of the spear to address it versus the NYPD." "We saw firsthand that that wasn't working, reached out to the first deputy mayor, called me back literally that night and made adjustments to move away from that policy shift until they can actually get it functioning and put more back with the NYPD."
Office-to-residential conversions. After structural problems at a building on 42nd Street, Rechler said the mayor was under pressure from labor groups to require union labor on every conversion "And he was very measured and responsive to input from myself and other people in the industry about what this really means." What came out of it was a program of building inspections rather than the blanket rule Rechler said the mayor could have imposed
7. Against Rent Control
A host put the long-run objection to him, citing the show's own figures of a market at new highs and corporate profits up 30%: one mayor cannot damage the center of capitalism in six months, but the bill for expanded rent control and subsidized grocery stores arrives eventually.
Rechler agreed with the premise and said so before he was asked twice. "Listen, I agree with a lot of the mayor's diagnosis of the challenges that we face. I don't necessarily agree with his prescriptions." The diagnosis he accepts: "I mean, we have a housing shortage. We have an affordability issue. We have a disenfranchisement of people."
Asked directly whether rent control makes a housing shortage worse, he did not hedge. "I agree, I'm against rent control. I'm against raising taxes. I think we have a spending issue, not a revenue issue in New York." He said the same about city-run grocery stores
Asked what he is for that the mayor stands for, his answer was the engagement itself rather than a policy. The mayor is doing the job of managing the city, and Rechler said he offers advice to mayors, governors and presidents whether or not he agrees with them
Bonus Insights
Rechler made a point of noting that every member of the new council is a business person, and started to compare it with the councils previous mayors assembled before the segment ended
The host's framing of the exchange throughout was skeptical of the mayor rather than of Rechler, and Rechler answered each time by separating the person from the policy
The corporate-profits figure in that exchange was the show's own, offered as part of the argument that a strong national backdrop is doing the work in New York rather than the mayor
Rechler's bottom line is that New York is outperforming the forecasts made about it, that the mayor has governed more conventionally than his campaign suggested, and that none of that changes his view that rent control and higher taxes are the wrong answers to a housing shortage.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
RXR (The New York property company Rechler runs, and the source of his read on office leasing and conversions)
New York City Economic Development Corporation (Where the mayor appointed Tony Shorris, one of the appointments Rechler cited as evidence the administration is focused on the issues)
Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Rechler is a director of its board of governors, which is the seat behind his comments on rates)
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