Julian Hamilton / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images
By Jerome London
Sergey Brin walked around Manhattan selling real estate for six cents on every dollar he invested, one month after New York elected a rent-seeking mayor.
Sergey Brin sold his stake in a Manhattan apartment fund back to A&E Real Estate for what the company described as six cents on the dollar, according to Bloomberg. Public records put the total value of the stake at about $79 million, although the exact purchase price and Brin’s initial investment are not public. Either way, the sale was a complete write-off for a fund that owns about 5,900 apartments, mostly stables throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Compared to the estimated value of $280 billion, the loss is a complete mistake.
Time is the issue. Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary over Andrew Cuomo in June 2025 and the general election on November 4, 2025, after campaigning to end rent. Brin’s exit was recorded in December, about a month after the results and more than six months before the Hiring Guidelines Board voted to suspend him. That makes the sale less of a response to finished policy than a bet on where New York housing politics was headed.
The sale did not result in a single vote. This fund was already under pressure. A&E’s operating costs have risen nearly 80% over the past decade while the city has approved only about 15% in cumulative rent increases over the same period. The company has faced foreclosures on more than $500 million in loans, including a $29 million default on 1080 Amsterdam Avenue, a $165 million foreclosure on a Queens property, and a $506 million foreclosure on Harlem’s Riverton Square. In January 2026, under new management, A&E paid a total of $2.1 million to the city for tenant harassment and approximately 4,000 property violations across 14 buildings. The University of California wrote down its own $115 million endowment in the same fund by 50% last year, making Brin’s exit part of a pattern.
Then came the snow. On June 25, 2026, the NYC Rental Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze apartment rentals on both one-year and two-year leases in approximately one million housing units effective October 1, the first two-year period in its history. Six of the nine board members were appointed from Mamdani. House member Christina Smyth resigned hours before the vote and called the process “theatrics.” Mamdani, 34, a Democratic Socialist, presented a signature campaign promise for about six months in his seat.
At the same time, Brin was tied to a $42 million Lake Tahoe estate in Crystal Bay, a nearly $49.7 million beachfront property in Malibu, and a $51 million off-the-market home on Allison Island in Miami, purchased from LVMH CEO Michael Burke through a Nevada venture. The point is not that A&E money is paid for those houses. Apparently they didn’t. The point is portfolio diversification: outside of New York exposure to multifamily and rare private assets in low-tax, less-regulated markets.
Brin has yet to comment, which follows his handling of nearly everything, and means the sale shouldn’t be read as a clean statement of intent. It’s still a symbol. One analyst quoted in coverage of the exit put it bluntly: “Institutional capital, both equity investors and lenders, are fleeing the New York City rental apartment sector.” Employers get instant security of tenure. Owners say the suspension will make maintenance, retrofitting, and new investment difficult. Both can be true. The real story is that New York rental housing is being sold as a political risk asset.
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