Hedge fund titan Cliff Asness ripped New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s plans for a rent freeze — warning it would be a “hydrogen bomb” for the local real estate market.
Speaking exclusively to The Post on Tuesday, the 59-year-old Wall Street tycoon — whose net worth Forbes places at $2.9 billion — shredded the left-wing firebrand’s proposed policy to ban price hikes for rent-stabilized apartments.
“Rent control is one of the few issues almost all economists agree destroys the city. So let’s triple down. Genius,” Asness said sarcastically on the final day of voting in citywide elections.
“A rent freeze is the hydrogen bomb to the atomic bomb of regular rent controls,” he added.
Asness likewise suggested a new motto for the city under Mamdani, who’s been widely criticized for refusing to denounce the terror group Hamas and the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
“Come for the communism, stay for the globalizing of the intifada. Shrewd, New York City,” said Asness. “I wish I lived in NYC so I could join those moving out to Texas or Florida if he wins.”
The AQR Capital Management boss, who is Jewish, has been a staunch critic of Mamdani’s Israel-bashing stances on the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks and the war in Gaza. In 2023, Asness stopped donations to University of Pennsylvania over a Palestinian literary festival that he branded an “antisemitic Burning Man fest.”
The Goldman Sachs alum set up his “quantitative” hedge fund in 1998 in Manhattan before moving it to Greenwich, Conn., in 2004. Today, the firm has $165 billion of assets under management.
The Brooklyn native’s comments on Mamdani’s rent freeze plans echo concerns laid out by Fortress co-CEO Drew McKnight, who warned that the Queens assemblyman’s housing policies would decimate the New York real estate market.
“You’ll just make it impossible to have new supply. Unfortunately, it could do damage to the people he’s trying to help.” McKnight told The Post in an exclusive Oct. 22 interview.
A bombshell opinion poll released Monday showed Mamdani with a razor-thin four-point lead over independent Andrew Cuomo, with the hard-left Democratic nominee notching 43.9% support to the former governor’s 39.4% in the three-way contest.
GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa came in a distant third, drawing just 15.5% support, the AtlasIntel survey found.
Mamdani could, in theory, benefit from his own rent-freeze plan.
He currently earns $143,000 annually as a state legislator, but he pays just $2,300 per month for a rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, that he shares with his wife.
The rent stabilization program caps how much landlords can raise rent each year on roughly 1 million apartments, with a board of mayoral appointees determining the rates.
While the average rent-stabilized household makes $60,000 annually, it is not uncommon for middle- or higher-income New Yorkers to live in the units, which typically rent at below-market rates.
New York’s financial services industry has been sounding the alarm about how Mamdani, 33, could meddle with the local economy if he wins the race to succeed Eric Adams at Gracie Mansion.
The Post reported earlier this week that many top firms are seriously considering moving to Dallas if they need to escape a Dem-backed tax grab on their bottom lines.
In July, a string of Wall Street titans including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon snubbed a meeting with Mamdani set up by business power broker Kathryn Wylde.
