Erik Mumford

[The Free Press @TheFP]

New York City’s rent freeze sounds compassionate—until you meet the landlords barely hanging on.

@LLBiggers interviews a landlord whose grandfather fled Castro’s Cuba and spent a lifetime building a future in New York.

Now, government housing policies threaten to destroy everything he built.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Landlord in New York says he will not be able to maintain his properties because of Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze

He says it’s because of property taxes, each of his 3 units he owned breaks down to $1,000 per month each in property taxes and they go up every year. With a rent freeze and property taxes continuing to go up, he will have to pay off people and not be able to maintain his building

I verified this with city wide averages and yes, property taxes on good location parts of New York break down to $800-$1,500 per month in property taxes per unit. Insanity

[ₕₐₘₚₜₒₙ @hamptonism]

This is by far one of the most important things I’ve watched in 2026.

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

It seems to me that most people are hooked on news items that last about a day or two and are then forgotten about, as other news items replace them, while failing to see how things are evolving and why. That’s not good for anyone.

There are big cycles unfolding almost exactly how they have repeatedly unfolded in the past, and they are being missed. If you’re interested in seeing these big cycles presented in an entertaining way, I am offering an overview of them here in my 5-minute animated video, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order. And if you'd like to see a more complete picture, you can watch the full 45-minute version here: https://t.co/1NjhMYQyaS

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

No peers. Except FL, TX, TN, ID, AZ, UT, NV, CO, WA, NC, SC, all had more growth. Florida had 2X the GDP growth of CA.

Half the 40% “growth” Gavin is claiming is just inflation LMAO what a clown.

He still owes us for his state park nuking our town, BTW.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Dear Mamdani,

Let me explain this the way I’d explain it to a five-year-old.

Imagine Tommy has a lemonade stand. Every week, lemons cost him a little more, sugar costs a little more, cups cost a little more, and his parents even charge him a little more for the table he uses. Then his teacher walks over and says, “Tommy, you’re not allowed to charge more than $1 for your lemonade anymore.”

Tommy says, “OK… but everything I need to make lemonade keeps getting more expensive. How am I supposed to pay for it?”

The teacher shrugs and says, “That’s not my problem.”

So Tommy starts buying cheaper ingredients. Then he stops fixing his stand when it breaks. Eventually, he decides selling lemonade just isn’t worth it anymore. His friend, who wanted to open another lemonade stand, sees all this and says, “Forget it. I’m not doing that.”

Now there are fewer lemonade stands than before.

The teacher proudly tells everyone, “See? I made lemonade affordable.”

No, you didn’t.

You made it less profitable to sell lemonade, so fewer people sold it.

Housing works the same way. Property taxes don’t freeze. Insurance doesn’t freeze. Labor doesn’t freeze. Repair costs don’t freeze. The mortgage doesn’t freeze. The only thing that freezes is rent.

And if the rent doesn’t cover the bills, the bills don’t magically disappear. Repairs get delayed. Buildings deteriorate. Some landlords sell. Others stop building altogether because the investment no longer makes sense.

You can’t solve a shortage by making it less worthwhile to provide the very thing that’s already in short supply.

It’s not greed. And it’s not ideology.

It’s basic math.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Imagine your family worked for a generation to save enough money to buy a brownstone occupied with rent stabilized tenants on the Upper West Side. The family financed the purchase with a mortgage from a bank based on the premise that rents and cash flow would at least keep pace with inflation so you could pay interest and principal on the mortgage and hopefully have some cash flow left as a return on your investment.

While you had rent stabilized tenants, you were led to believe that the NYC Rent Guidelines Board would be required to adjudicate rental increases each year by taking a measure of the inflation of costs to own and operate a building and setting rental increases appropriately.

You believed the RGB would do its job as the board is comprised of two representatives each for landlords and tenants and five independent representatives that represent the general public.

Now, a new mayor @NYCMayor Mamdani is elected on the promise of freezing rents. There are about two million rent stabilized renters that benefit if rents are frozen so by promising frozen rents the new candidate for mayor buys votes and wins the election.

The new mayor achieves his objective by stacking the RGB with directors who do not follow their obligations and simply vote for a rent freeze as a preordained conclusion as evidenced by the statements of an RGB director who resigned in protest for this very reason.

Meanwhile, inflation in NYC is rampant in utilities, real estate taxes, insurance, repairs and maintenance, etc. and now your rents are frozen. Real estate is a high operating leverage business which means that frozen rents and inflating expenses will cause property cash flows to plummet and your after debt service cash flow to go negative.

I expect therefore there will be hundreds if not thousands of small NYC property owners who are now or will shortly be underwater on their mortgages, and without any cash flow to maintain their assets.

If you remember the images of the South Bronx burning in the mid 1970s, you can viscerally understand what is happening to small NYC real estate owners.

While the rent freeze appears to be short-term good news (long term it will lead to poorly maintained apartments) for 2 million NYC renters, it is bad news for the 2 million or more renters in the 1 million market rate apartments in the City because a landlord-hostile market is not likely to add meaningfully more supply and market rents will likely continue to escalate at a high rate.

All of this seems quite unfair and wrong unless I missing something?

Why am I wrong?

For disclosure: I do not own any NYC rental apartments.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

Economist Thomas Sowell was once a Marxist, but now he advocates for free markets.

"What was your wake-up to what was wrong with [Marxism]?" @RubinReport asked him.

"Facts," Sowell replies.

Here’s why I admire Sowell:

[Coin Bureau @coinbureau]

🚨FORD REHIRES 350 ENGINEERS AFTER REPLACING THEM WITH AI

Ford’s VP of engineering admitted the company “mistakenly thought” AI alone could replace experienced workers and still produce high-quality vehicles, per The Verge.

Ford has recalled more cars than any other US automaker this year after cutting over 5,000 workers since 2020.

CEO Jim Farley previously declared that AI is “going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”

[Vivek Sen @Vivek4real_]

MILTON FRIEDMAN:

"CONSUMERS DON’T PRODUCE INFLATION."

"PRODUCERS DON’T PRODUCE INFLATION.

"INFLATION IS PRODUCED ONLY BY TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT CREATION OF MONEY, AND NOTHING ELSE."

[MLFootball @MLFootball]

TRENDING: #Commanders cornerback Mike Sainristil posted a mini-vlog of what his life looks like on mini-camp days.

Mike owns a farm with goats, chickens, cows, and horses.

Sainristil is up at 5 AM feeding his animals before leaving for football.

👀

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

They're not freezing your rent, they're freezing your housing providers' income, while their expenses keep increasing.

The point isn't to make your housing affordable, it's to make providing housing financially inviable, so government(s) can seize the unmanageable properties.

Our lack of financial literacy is going to destroy us.
https://t.co/Eix9fVp1BK

[@jason @Jason]

Fuck yeah, AMERICA! 🇺🇸

[Hunter Horsley @HHorsley]

This is a 2 minute video about taxing the wealthy.

There is no mention of programs it will fund. Or why the tax dollars are needed. Or what the money would be used for. Or how those less fortunate could be supported to themselves become wealthy.

The benefits are no longer the point.

The implicit message is about punishment. Punishing those doing well is now good politics.

Sign of the times —

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

NYC forced a high minimum wage on delivery drivers.

Now, customers tip less.

"The decrease in tips … offset all of the gains," explains @judgeglock of @ManhattanInst.

Why government "help" usually hurts:

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The best predictor of success for tech companies, at every stage from during the YC batch to public company with billions in revenue, is the rate of shipping new stuff.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

$122 for Thai takeout?

That's what’s happened in Seattle, after politicians forced a high minimum wage for DoorDashers.

Now customers order less food, and drivers get less work.

Government wage controls ALWAYS fail:

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

“We should take Elon’s $1 trillion and use it to solve world hunger!”

👉 Except Africa’s already received $2.6 trillion in foreign aid since 1960.

“What if we use it to fix the education system?”

👉 The U.S. already spends $1.3 trillion a year on it.

“Let’s end poverty then!”

👉 America’s already spent over $22 trillion fighting poverty.

Not to mention… it’s theft. Brilliant video, @marktilbury.

Writer: Michael

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

John Lennon wrote a beautiful song about socialism.

“Imagine no possessions” he told us.

He also:
– helped write his band’s anti-tax anthem, Taxman
– incorporated his IP holdings
– moved to a lower-tax country
– fiercely protected his royalties
- drove two Rolls Royce’s and had multiple luxury homes.
– made sure even the royalty cheques for Imagine were kept safe for his estate so his family would remain wealthy in perpetuity.

If he believed it, he’d have lived it. The trouble with socialism is that even the people who love the idea won’t run the experiment on themselves.

John Lennon writing Imagine while owning two Rolls Royce Phantoms and later having a law suit to protect his royalties tells you all you need to know about socialism in practice.

It doesn’t work outside of the imagination.

[Kyle Tibbitts @KyleTibbitts]

The perfect explanation of American culture 🇺🇸