Latest news with #ScottRechler
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
$1 Billion Power Play: RXR and Liberty Just Made Their Boldest Bet Yet on U.S. Apartments
New York-based RXR is ramping up its credit ambitionswith backing from Liberty Mutualto seize what could be one of the most overlooked financing opportunities in U.S. real estate. The two firms are expanding their long-running partnership to deploy up to $1 billion into apartment loans, zeroing in on senior debt, construction loans, and flexible preferred equity. The timing isn't accidental. A wall of multifamily loansmany originated in 2021 and 2022is coming due just as refinancing becomes harder to secure. RXR's CEO Scott Rechler sees this not as a headwind, but as a "generational opportunity" to step in where traditional lenders are pulling back. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 8 Warning Signs with BSP:HBSA3. This move follows a string of credit plays by RXR, including a $250 million bond raise backed by Liberty and New York Life, and the recruitment of JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) and H.I.G. alum Steven Schwartz to lead the firm's credit business. RXR originated over $1 billion in loans last year and is positioning to scale that several times over in 2025. The expansion isn't just about scaleit's about optionality. Rechler says the new setup allows RXR to offer borrowers more tailored capital solutions, as owners across the apartment market face rising costs and tighter lending conditions. From an investor's lens, this isn't just another real estate fund ramping up. This is a sophisticated credit strategy designed to plug into the capital vacuum left by risk-off lenders. Liberty Mutual Investments, with over $100 billion under management, has been riding alongside RXR since 2010and doubling down now could signal confidence in the long game. As the refinancing crunch unfolds, RXR's credit arm could become a key player underwriting the next cycle of transitional deals, especially in multifamily markets where flexibility and speed will matter most. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Post
08-08-2025
- Business
- New York Post
This small city has managed to keep rents down since 2020 — and it's a quick train ride from NYC
In a region where rents have skyrocketed since 2020, New Rochelle has pulled off what most New York-area cities can't: keeping rents virtually flat. While median rents in New York City and nearby New Jersey markets have jumped 25% or more in just a few years, this Westchester County commuter hub has seen only a 1.6% increase — and even posted a 2% drop from 2020 to 2023, according to Apartment List. The secret is a decade-long construction blitz. Advertisement New Rochelle, a 40-minute commute from Midtown, has added more than 4,500 apartments since 2014, with another 6,500 planned — a 37% boost to its housing supply. That surge has kept competition in check, even as demand from priced-out Manhattanites grows. 5 New Rochelle, a suburb 40 minutes from Midtown Manhattan, has managed to keep rents in check, rising just 1.6% since 2020 and even dipping 2% between 2020 and 2023, by aggressively building housing. Lucas – 5 Over the past decade, the city has added more than 4,500 units, with another 6,500 planned — a 37% jump in its apartment stock. Bloomberg via Getty Images Advertisement 'They set the playbook, then private developers could come and play,' Scott Rechler, chief executive of RXR, the master developer behind much of the city's new skyline, including the 28-story One Clinton Park, now 92% leased, told the Wall Street Journal. City leaders rewrote zoning rules, streamlined environmental reviews and guaranteed qualifying projects an approval in as little as 90 days. 5 Since 2014, officials have streamlined approvals, standardized zoning, loosened building restrictions and offered tax incentives, attracting $2.5 billion in development and drawing newcomers priced out of New York City. Leon718 – Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert says the building spree has paid off beyond rents. Advertisement 'The success of our development has allowed us to be able to invest and explore other opportunities around affordability,' she told the Journal, pointing to infrastructure repairs, food programs and homebuyer assistance funded by developer fees. For newcomers like Aaron Thornton, who traded Manhattan's Upper East Side for a $3,600 two-bedroom with a gym, a lounge and room for his growing family, the math was simple. 'We couldn't have raised or had a baby there, because there's just no space,' he added. 5 Master developer RXR's downtown projects, including luxury towers, have filled quickly and the city requires at least 10% of new units be affordable. Getty Images Advertisement 5 New Rochelle stands on a Metro-North line, offering easy access to and from the city. Getty Images Not all residents are celebrating. Longtime local Karen Hessel calls the changes 'the pains of construction,' citing noise, closures and parking shortages. Others, like activist Shaun Wayawotzki, worry newcomers aren't contributing locally. 'They work in the city, they spend their money in the city and they come back here and they sleep. They're not part of the community.'
CNBC
01-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
The way to deal with housing shortage is to add more supply, says RXR CEO Scott Rechler
RXR chairman and CEO Scott Rechler joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss his thoughts ont he NYC mayoral race, addressing the housing shortage in the city, and more.
Irish Times
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Zohran Mamdani shakes up directionless Democrats
The man says he usually goes for walks on his lunch hour in Manhattan but on a furiously hot Wednesday it would be foolhardy, so he is sitting on a wall shaded by trees at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park. 'And where I am from, I like the heat,' he says, smiling. He speaks with a strong Indian accent even though he has been living in the city for decades. He lives in Jersey and commutes to the city to work. We chat for a while about the day's big events: he hope the Israel-Iran ceasefire will hold and believes that Donald Trump is sincere in his hatred for war. But he rolls his eyes and shakes his head at the mention of Zohran Mamdani's electrifying New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary victory the night before. 'I cannot understand why all of these people come here from the East if they do not want to enjoy capitalism,' he says. Mamdani, he predicts, would be a disaster if elected as mayor and would catapult the city back to the folkloric deprivations of the 1970s – the ghettos, the crime-stalked nights, the blackouts, the streets lined with uncollected rubbish. As it turns out, in his paean to capitalism, he is echoing the words of New York's biggest landlord. READ MORE 'You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,' Scott Rechler told the New York Times. 'It's the capital of capitalism.' [ This man could be just what the American left needs Opens in new window ] The scale of Mamdani's win over the returning patriarchal figure of Andrew Cuomo – who conceded defeat less than an hour after the polls closed on a broiling Tuesday night – has terrified the captains of industry and commerce. The late-night conservative talkshows forecast a future of New York entrepreneurs and wealth creators fleeing a city run by a socialist – or, as Trump has labelled Mamdani, 'a communist lunatic'. Cuomo's numbers were so disheartening that he has yet to confirm his intention to continue against Mamdani as an independent in the November vote. New York political affiliations are 6:1 Democratic. Mike Bloomberg was the last Republican mayor, and he threw his financial heft behind Cuomo's underwhelming campaign. By Wednesday, the Wall Steet Journal headline read: 'Wall Street panics over prospect of a socialist running New York City.' New York city mayor Eric Adams formally announces his re-election campaign. Photograph: Hilary Swift/New York Times They needed a saviour. But who could that blue-caped hero be? A familiar face, it turned out. Barely had the floor been swept after Mamdani's Tuesday night victory party at a rooftop bar in Long Island City than current mayor Eric Adams was charting the next phase of a wily political career. After meeting business leaders, he officially announced his campaign as an independent. In 2022 Adams was inaugurated as a Democratic mayor but his popularity plummeted after he was indicted on bribery and campaign finances charges, which were quashed by the Trump administration. Adams had dismissed Mamdani as a 'snake-oil salesman' at the beginning of the campaign, prompting the memorable New York Post headline 'Scamdani'. [ Eric Adams, the swaggering, 'weird' mayor of New York, is the first to face indictment in the office's 360-year history Opens in new window ] Adams has laid out the blueprint for the narrative behind his bid to return to office for a second term after a mayoral race that will intensify once the summer distractions of the Mets and Yankees are over with. To Adams, Mamdani is a princeling: a privileged son of academics voicing socialistic rhetoric and promising to cure the struggles of which he knows nothing. A Mamdani mayorship would, he warned, see a defunding of the city's police force and a rise in crime – and fear – among the 4.6 million subway users in the city's five boroughs. Free bus transport, childcare costs, rent control and a vision of city-owned price-controlled grocery stores featured strong in the Mamdani manifesto, which has propelled him towards the Democratic candidacy. He says corporate tax hikes and a tax raise for the wealthy will meet the costs of the policies. He has also vowed to end Adams's practice of co-operation with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids to deport immigrants. Crime will rise, Adams warned. The money will leave the city. 'Most troubling is his calls to give everything away free. Nothing is more troubling when people are struggling [than making] promises that can't be lived up to.' Adams possesses a blue-collar triumph-over-adversity life-story, flipping a childhood of extreme poverty in late 1960s Bushwick and juvenile delinquency into a 20-year career in the police force followed by a political life where he navigated his way through the ranks with guile and persistence. His pitch will be that he has lived the struggles and life experience that Mamdani is purporting to champion. He will also stoke the fears of anti-Semitism that Mamdani has persistently rejected, arguing that he is pro-Palestinian. 'I think the Jewish community should be concerned,' he said this week. 'It is problematic when you have a socialist who is displaying anti-Semitic views to be able to run and be elected in New York City.' This hits hard. — Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) The Maga right has responded to Mamdani's triumph with predictable performative alarmism. Marjorie Taylor Greene reposted a digitally altered image of the Statue of Liberty shrouded in a black burka with the caption 'This hit hard'. Meanwhile, Tennessee Republican congressman Andy Ogle posted a copy of the letter he sent to attorney general Pam Bondi on Thursday requesting that Mamdani be investigated to establish if he should be subject to denaturalisation proceedings on the grounds that he may have procured US citizenship by 'concealment of material support for terrorism'. Mamdani has, during the course of a campaign for which he was a rank outsider just months ago, spoken of the racism he has faced since declaring himself in a field of 11 candidates. 'I get messages which say the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. I get threats on my life, and on the people that I love, and I try not to talk about it. Because the function of racism, as Toni Morrison said, is distraction. My focus has always been on making this a city that is affordable, on making this a city that New Yorkers can see themselves in. And it takes a toll. 'Because this is a city that every single person deserves to be in, a city we all belong to and the thing that makes me proudest in this campaign is that the strength of our movement is built on our ability to have built something across Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers; across New Yorkers of all faiths, all backgrounds and all boroughs. 'Anti-Semitism is such a real issue in the city. And it has been hard to see it weaponised by candidates who do not seem to have any sincere interest in tackling [it] but rather in using it as a pretext to make political points.' Zohran Mamdani celebrates with his wife, Rama Duwaji, at a Democratic primary night gathering in New York on Tuesday. Photograph: Shuran Huang/New York Times In short, the November race will be riveting and personal and deeply unpleasant. And Mamdani's sudden emergence into the national spotlight, redolent of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's shock 2018 midterm win over Joe Crowley, presents the addled party with a new dilemma. Nimble and persuasive and inspiring as Mamdani's campaign was, he still earned just 430,000 votes. It's a mere 10th of the city's population. He will need to build on that if he is topple the Adams-led resistance to change. And there are cross-party concerns that Mamdani simply does not have the experience to run the mayor's office having entered politics just four years ago. Against that, his campaign, wedded to a clear vision and ideology based around the concerns of ordinary city workers, has cast in sharp contrasting illumination the muddled, directionless present of the Democratic Party as a whole. New York party grandees Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries both congratulated the 33-year-old on his win but have not formally endorsed him. Ocasio-Cortez supported him early and vocally. And a significant city show of support was offered on Wednesday by congressman Jerrold Nadler, whose constituency includes the influential and heavily Jewish Upper West Side of Manhattan. Nadler compared Mamdani's breakthrough as comparable to Barack Obama's day-star rise in 2008. 'Voters in New York City demanded change and, with Zohran's triumph we have a direct repudiation of Donald Trump's tax cuts and authoritarianism,' he said. Nadler's support will help to assuage doubts among the city's Jewish community. Primary election maps depicted Cuomo's successes in Manhattan as being limited to the Upper West and Upper East sides of the city, as well as the Bronx and the outer reaches of Queens. If Cuomo decides to bow out, Adams will seek to build on those boroughs. But a recent Marist poll showed Mamdani, despite his brandishing of Binyamin Netanyahu as a 'war criminal' during the campaign, had garnered 20 per cent support among Jewish New Yorkers intending to vote and now, Nadler has vowed to work with the candidate and with 'all New Yorkers to fight against all bigotry and hate.' An epic political autumn awaits New York.
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
As Donors Work Against Mamdani, Top Democrats Stop Short of Backing Him
The day after Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani rocked the nation's largest city by becoming the presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee, New York's political leaders declined to formally endorse him, and some donors to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo considered coalescing behind Mayor Eric Adams. In an interview, Scott Rechler, one of the city's biggest landlords, said that in a general election race between Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, and Mr. Adams, he would put his support and potentially his financial resources behind the scandal-tarred incumbent. Mr. Rechler, who donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cuomo, expressed hope that the former governor and Mr. Adams, who is running in the general election as an independent, would not split the centrist vote. 'You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,' Mr. Rechler said. 'It's the capital of capitalism.' Mr. Cuomo, who for months led in Democratic primary polls, continued on Wednesday to leave open the possibility that he would run in November on a third-party line. Polls and conventional political wisdom suggest that such a move would only enhance Mr. Mamdani's chances, at the expense of Mr. Adams. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and supporter of President Trump who donated $500,000 to Mr. Cuomo's super PAC, said on social media that he also 'may ultimately support and endorse' Mr. Adams. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
