What the Real Estate Board of New York calls “The Invisible Engine” of the city’s economy — i.e., the contribution of real estate and real estate-related taxes to the municipal coffers — is invisible only to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
In a recent video the mayor might wish he could take back, he slammed billionaire Ken Griffin for owning a $238 million apartment — apparently unaware that Griffin’s planned new $6 billion Park Avenue headquarters for his Citadel companies would pump a fortune in property taxes into the city treasury.
In fact, real estate — the “fiscal bedrock” of the city’s economy, as REBNY calls it — generates about half of locally gathered tax revenue, as the report by Keith DeCoster and Basha Gerhards spells out in detail.
Real estate industry-generated tax revenue rose to a record $39.6 billion in fiscal 2025, accounting for nearly 50% of locally generated tax revenue and up from the previous year’s $37 billion. Nearly 90% of the $39.6 million was from the Real Property Tax, the city’s most stable revenue source.
It was the largest source of funding for the city, easily besting the totals for personal income, corporate and sales taxes.
Taxes on “commercial” properties including multifamily buildings as well as office, retail, hotels and factories account for 77% of all property taxes.
REBNY noted that $39.6 billion is $3.5 billion more than the equivalent of all salaries and wages for the city’s vast workforce of 280,000 employees.
The real estate-generated contribution is essential to support the city’s 2027 budget of $127 billion — more than the combined budgets of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington. D.C.
Asked whether the report was meant to educate Mamdani, Gerhards tactfully pointed out that REBNY updates the data every year.
She added, “We hope all policy makers and elected officials, regardless of administration, will absorb and take the findings into account to keep our economy humming.”
