The slow-motion take over of private property in NYC.

Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox

As 2025 draws to a rapid close, many people are looking ahead to 2026 and figuring out what it will mean for them, their families, their livelihoods, their futures… There is a lot of retrospection this time of year as people are starting to plan for their New Year’s resolutions and goals, as they shape in their minds what they want their life to look like in 2026. What do they want to do, or not do, or change, or accomplish… The reflection and defining of one’s goals are important things to do, indeed crucial to a successful year ahead. As you sit down to work through your ambitions for 2026, I will warn that you should not ignore the fact that there are things on the political horizon that could seriously affect how your future unfolds, regardless of whether or not you are someone who is politically astute or “involved”.

With more radical, anti American-Dream politicians taking control in cities across the country like NYC, Miami, Charlotte, Patterson, Philadelphia and more, you will start to see stunning laws passed and policies implemented that you never would have imagined possible in our great nation. You may find yourself scratching your head and wondering what happened to our land of the free, and home of the brave?

Let me give you a good example of something that’s going on right now here in New York. As you well know, just a few weeks ago, NYC elected a Communist, Zohran Mamdani, to be its next mayor. Below is a snippet from my article I published immediately after Mamdani won:

The Playbook

Though a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Mamdani’s policies are communist to the core. In fact, he openly refers to his fellow DSA members in the Assembly as his “comrades”. Former NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio was a Socialist, and yet Mamdani makes De Blasio look like Ronald Reagan. Let’s briefly review what Mamdani openly promotes, as you conjure up an image in your mind of a caricature of Mamdani telling DeBlasio to hold his beer for him:

• Seizing the means of production (meaning the government will control all industry)
• Government-run grocery stores (which will undercut private stores’ already marginal profits whereby driving them out of business and putting the City in control of your food)
• Defunding the police (and largely replacing them with glorified social workers)
• Emptying prisons (after all, “Violence is an artificial construct”, says he)
• Freezing the rent (so that landlords cannot raise rents, not even to keep pace with skyrocketing maintenance costs of insurance, repairs, and general inflation)
• Abolishing private property ownership (which will come at an expedited basis as rents are frozen and costs explode)
• Increasing minimum wage to $30/hour (which will force businesses to fire employees and probably then fill the void with less costly AI)
• Providing FREE bus service (to the tune of upwards of $500,000,000/year)
• Providing FREE child care (see below)
• Legalizing prostitution (perhaps he’ll have those “sex service providers” watch the children in their spare time)

If Mamdani pushes through his “freebie” socialist utopia, it’s estimated to cost New Yorkers an additional $9 BILLION/year (on top of the already sickeningly bloated $117 billion annual budget). The kicker? He says he will pay for all of this through a wealth transfer program that will further tax big corporations and “the rich” at an even more increased percentage so that they are paying significantly more than all of his other constituents. Remember his pre-election rally last week in Queens where a stadium full of 10,000 people were chanting “Tax the rich!”… (So much for “fairness”, “equity” and “inclusion”).

Bullet point six above, abolition of property rights, is what is happening right now in NYC, as the legislature just passed a law called the “Community Opportunity to Purchase Act” or COPA. As per usual, the far Left politicians slapped a seemingly feel-good title on their Trojan Horse of a policy, in the hopes of duping you into thinking the law will help you. In reality, COPA is the beginning of the end of private property ownership and control in NYC (unless of course it is stopped by a lawsuit that somehow finds honest, constitutionally inclined judges – a very, very tall order in New York. [Sigh]). Remember folks, they always wrap their biggest lies up in candy, so it won’t surprise you to hear that the lefties are pushing this law as a “protect the tenants” and “save affordable housing in NYC” type of policy. Don’t be fooled by their word salad tap dance! Here’s what COPA is actually about…

Stealthily passed earlier in December, just as the holidays were beginning, the COPA law requires a property owner to notify the City at least 180 days in advance of their intention to sell their property. Certain government approved non-profits (read that again, folks… organizations approved by the City) then have 60 days to declare their interest in purchasing that property, and then have another 120 days to negotiate a deal. An owner is not allowed to offer the property up for sale to anyone other than special, hand-picked organizations that the government approves of. Yes, you read that right, my friends, the government will tell you who you can sell your property to and when!

Other than the wildly authoritarian nature of this new law, COPA is also stunningly impractical, and its impracticality is what can be the kiss of death for the property owner. In short, COPA is a procedural power shift from private parties doing business transactions on the open, free market… to government control over transactions where their cronies and approved buyers get first and last say on many NYC real estate deals.

I was a real-estate based attorney for a couple of decades prior to COVID. Over that time, I performed countless closings on behalf of my clients (sellers and buyers alike), and I can tell you with certainty that the real estate market is not one that works successfully unless the free market economy is allowed to govern. For starters, sellers don’t plan to offload their residential property, and then sit there and wait several months to see if they are legally allowed to do it. Why not? There are a plethora of logical reasons why a 6 month waiting period to sell your real estate is absurd. First of all, there is the financial risk factor, where the market could change in that 6 month time period whereby negatively hurting the seller if the market trends downward (or outright tanks). Moreover, mortgage banks don’t like to sit and wait on a closing for several months, due to market volatility and interest rate fluctuations. This means that buyers who need financing to buy the property will likely be unable to find a mortgage bank that will “wait for them” as they go through the arduous COPA process and timelines. Compliance costs and the risk factors are too great for buildings that fall under COPA to not be negatively affected. As such, many buyers will likely look to the seller to give them a “COPA discount” to compensate them for having to jump through hoops and cut through endless red tape to get to the finish line at the closing table.

Then there are a myriad of economic reasons a seller should never be forced to wait 6+ months to sell. For example, some sellers need the sale proceeds in order to pay off debts; some need the money to be able to purchase their next property; some must sell in order to satisfy the terms of a divorce, etc. If they have to wait more than half a year to do that, it would, in many cases, destroy them… put them into default on their mortgage or taxes, ruin their credit, abolish their ability to safely maintain the property, and so on. Does the COPA law freeze the debts of a property owner during that 6 month time frame that the government makes you wait and negotiate with a government-approved party? The answer is, NO.

Realistically, it’s more like 8 or 9 months (at least) that an owner will have to wait to be able to sell their property, because the 6 month restriction is just to allow the government’s cronies an opportunity to negotiate a deal. If a deal is ultimately struck, the closing will take another couple of months beyond the date that the contract is signed by the parties. And if no deal is had with a government-installed buyer, then the seller needs to put their property on the open market and see what the public offers – a prospect that, again, takes weeks if not months.

Wait, there’s more. Once the seller finds a private buyer on the open market, the law requires the government-approved buyer to have the right of first refusal! This means, the government-favored buyer can push out the private buyer altogether. What realistic effect with this have on a sale? It will likely cause buyers to flee the NYC market altogether, as they will not want to deal with the uncertainty of possibly losing out on the purchase after spending much time, energy and money investigating and negotiating the purchase. My oh my… it’s almost as if the government wants private property owners to suffer and lose out in the end.

This new totalitarian law will affect all multi-family, residential property owners in NYC whose properties have 4 or more units (so basically everyone) and are subject to rent control laws. Yeah, sure, the law has a couple of exclusions like owner-occupied buildings with 5 or fewer units, and vacant land (gee, thanks). Don’t exhale a sigh of relief though just because there are a few exceptions. Realize that laws are very easily amended in a one-party-rule cesspool like NYC where the Dems have a stunning supermajority hold on the NYC legislature (45 Dems to 6 Republicans), and now a Communist for a mayor.

And laws like these that seem mostly innocuous at first blush, always blossom into a behemoth that few people foresaw at the outset. Trust me. It’s part of their playbook. It will go something like this: First, in order to help them address the “housing affordability crisis”, they will control “just” the “big” multi-family properties in NYC that have rent control restrictions; then because the housing crisis isn’t getting any better, they will expand a smidge and it turns into control over the “little guys” too; and then when there’s still a self-proclaimed housing crisis, they will expand the law again to include all properties of every sort in NYC (even the ones that don’t have rent control restrictions); and then because that stubborn housing crisis just won’t go away, the State will jump on board and expand the law into other cities in other parts of the State; and so on and so forth.

What if a property owner doesn’t follow the law and decides to sell their property to someone without first allowing the government “approved” entities to buy it? Well then there are penalties, of course! The City can fine you up to $30,000, and it can block your sale to the unapproved buyer (or possibly undo the sale if you already closed)! Unbelievable.

Of course, at this point, since Mayor Adams has not signed it into law, this is just a bill that has passed the City legislature. Raise your hand if you think that Mamdani will veto this bill next month when he takes the reigns from Adams?

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https://attorneycox.substack.com/p/the-beginning-of-the-end