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Inside the Boardroom: Mitchell Moinian

Daily Beat | Dec 22, 2021

PROPTECHInside the Boardroom: Mitchell MoinianByJoseph RichterPublished on December 22, 2021

Mitch Moinian (Credit: Moinian Group)Mitchell Moinian, Principal at The Moinian Group, joined the Real Estate Daily Beat for an interview. We discussed the resilience of New York City, the firm’s venture arm – Currency M, and how he envisions the future of the office.

Daily Beat: How has your rental portfolio occupancy been since March 2020?

Mitchell Moinian: Prior to the pandemic, the multi-family rental market in New York City was at an all time high.

When COVID-19 hit, there was a mass exodus; with many predicting the death of New York City. I never shared in that perspective because New York City remains the most resilient, high-demand, prominent residential market on the planet. Even when cases increased drastically at the height of the pandemic, the city was still filled with millions of people. While the occupancy rates decreased 10% to 20% this was more reflective of the city being at such a peak pre-pandemic, leaving abundant room for a slump.

Daily Beat: Does The Moinian Group own any multi-family outside of New York?

Mitchell Moinian: ​​When it comes to our apartment portfolio, it’s reflective of our dedication to New York City, with all each of our buildings developed within The Big Apple except for Bezel at Miami Worldcenter, a 43-story, 434-unit, luxury rental high rise in a commanding, high-visibility location in the heart of Miami’s new world-cass mixed-use project. We opened the leasing office last month and the velocity has been and continues to be off the charts. In Miami, I think the standard for the rental market has historically been a little lower than Manhattan. We have brought our unmatched standard of luxury to the market and people are recognizing it.

Daily Beat: What are your thoughts on the overall resurgence in the market?

Mitchell Moinian: The bright spot in our experience during the market’s has been the major flight to quality. We benefited from this tremendously because all of our residential buildings are luxury high-rise, full-service properties. While they may have had their headwinds and moments of exodus, but they really bounced back quickly. As such, even though we took hits like everyone else, our vacancy rates were really on the lower end relative to others in the market. For example, PLG, our new 26-story, 467-unit entirely unobstructed building floating above Prospect Lefferts Gardens, opened in January 2020. We leased the entire building basically from day one of the pandemic all the way until about the end of the summer. A big part of that was Brooklyn versus Manhattan.

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