LA Real Estate Sounds Off on Mayoral Candidate Nithya Raman

Politicos seized on the Shakespearean drama unfolding within Los Angeles City Hall with a Karen Bass ally now running against the incumbent for mayor.

But real estate’s take on Nithya Raman, the council’s Progressive darling and Democratic Socialists of America member, and her eleventh-hour bid for mayor? It’s reading lukewarm at best.

“We’re not very big fans of Nithya,” Dan Yukelson, the CEO and executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles said. “She’s a Democratic Socialist-aligned political operative and thus far has not shown a great deal of respect for people that have struggled to own rental housing to help house people within their communities.”

Yukelson, whose group represents landlords and property owners, called the regulations Raman’s backed to date “oppressive.” That’s led to what he described as a leaky bucket among mom-and-pop apartment owners who are exiting the business with their kids wanting nothing to do with carrying on the tradition.

There’s a clear track record for Raman among real estate, and real estate professionals across commercial and residential don’t have to look far. The Fourth District councilmember got behind Measure United to House L.A., ULA’S official name as a 2022 ballot measure. It’s passage raised city transfer taxes to 4 percent on deals starting at $5.3 million and kicks up to 5.5 percent for trades of $10.6 million or more, and it has emboldened tenants with various protections. There’s also her recent support of an ordinance that passed late last year capping the rent increase range to a 1 percent minimum and 4 percent maximum under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. The previous range had been 3 percent to 8 percent.

A spokesperson for Raman’s office deferred inquiries to a separate representative handling her campaign. The campaign representative did not respond to a request for comment.

With Raman’s declaration paperwork for mayor filed hours before the deadline, it’s unclear who from the industry and beyond will back her bid given campaign contributions for the councilmember have not yet been reported.

While many in the industry say they broadly support addressing homelessness and more housing, some say the policy pendulum has swung too far in support of or against a few, rather than speaking to the middle.

“I think so much of [policy] is looking at either lower income or the ultra-high-net-worth individuals, and there’s just that vast middle ground that isn’t necessarily spoken to,” said Matthew Clayman, the managing broker of Coldwell Banker Realty’s Beverly Hills and Hancock Park offices.

New villains

Michael Nourmand, the president of Beverly Hills-based luxury residential brokerage Nourmand & Associates, is one of those mom-and-pop property owners lost in the middle. He owns four buildings, totaling 16 units within the city of Los Angeles. He can’t see investing in multifamily anymore.

“If you had asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said that I wanted to buy more and more apartment buildings and that was where I was going to put the bulk of my money,” Nourmand said. “Asking me that question now, I have no desire to buy more apartment buildings. That’s because of policy.”

Rent caps and increased tenant protections some argue are one-sided have made it difficult to count on a steady annual return.

“Before you knew, ‘OK, I can bank on 3 percent increases every year.’ The climate’s changed,” Nourmand said. “You didn’t have bus benches that said the rents are too damn high. I wasn’t a villain. I don’t want people to be homeless or people who can’t afford where they live but, at the same time, people buy apartment buildings as an investment.”

That recasting of who is real estate’s bad guy is the shift that’s occurred over the years, pointed out attorney Avi Sinai, who represents property owners in eviction cases with his Santa Monica firm Sinai Law Firm.

“My clients at the end of the day are all housing providers. They manage the buildings. They maintain the buildings. They collect rent and there’s this duality of a lot of progressive politicians being pro-housing,” Sinai said. “It used to be developers are evil; now they’re good. At some point, someone has to manage these buildings and housing providers are still being demonized.”

Sinai said he sees that play out in the court system day after day with funding for eviction defense spending, some of which comes from the revenue pot generated by Measure ULA.

More and more tenants are getting eviction defense help, whether with an attorney or the assistance to shepherd their own cases against landlords with ULA funds, Sinai said.

“This wasn’t the case four years ago,” he said. “Now, every eviction goes the distance.”

And he’s seen many defense attorneys file motions under what’s called “notice was defective” to point out an error in an eviction notice and get a judge to toss a case at the last minute. Sometimes, a defense attorney will see an issue in an eviction notice and not play that card until after the expense of discovery and litigation. Sinai said that even happened to him during a lunch break in which he received a text about the emergency motion to dismiss.

“This is not just Nithya Raman; there’s a lot of people who support it,” Sinai said. “The problem is the taxpayers are paying for it. There’s no justice being done. I don’t know that the taxpayers know this is how the money is being spent.”

The mansion tax

For some in real estate, it’s Raman’s support of the mansion tax that’s been most irksome.

The councilwoman, who told the Chicago Tribune in 2023, the ballot measure was “marketed as a mansion tax” to make it “easy for voters to get behind” is now being questioned on her about-face late last month to point out the “unintended consequences” of the tax many critics said were always there.

With that recognition, Raman proposed her council peers approve a motion that would create a 15-year carveout for new multifamily, commercial and mixed-use construction projects, along with a one-time exemption for property owners impacted by a natural disaster. The idea was to get the ULA amendments onto the June ballot. However, the council moved it to further discussion within the Housing and Homelessness Committee.

“It was a nice thought,” Yukelson said of the proposed changes, “but it just shows how little she understands about the real estate business and what motivates investors to put money into projects. She’s basically kicking the can down the road 15 years and eventually somebody’s going to have to pay the 5.5 percent toll on whatever they sell or buy.”

Real estate has repeatedly criticized the two-tier tax for tamping down on deal flow across residential and commercial, freezing construction financing and, as many have now said, redlining the city to lenders and developers.

Still, supporters of the tax argue it’s raised over $1 billion — less than what was originally estimated it would pull in annually — to help people stay under a roof, fight landlords and build affordable housing.

“Many of us, including me, felt like it was common sense that if we arbitrarily pick a number to start taxing that people would stop selling, which would create less inventory and drive prices up,” said The Agency’s Ben Belack, who lives in Raman’s district, and said he’s had enough of a time simply trying to get the councilwoman and her office to help repave his street.

Still, even with the critiques of what Raman’s backed in the past, some say she has good ideas too.

When Raman and Bass took a meeting with the Doheny Sunset Plaza Neighborhood Association before last January’s Palisades and Eaton fires, Belack said the councilwoman’s proposal of auditing the flow of money was something he could get behind. Additionally, Richard Klug — an apartment owner and agent with Sotheby’s International Realty — applauds Raman for at least saying out loud what many have been saying for several years now when it comes to ULA. In fact, he was vocal at a meeting of the San Fernando Valley Association of Realtors about a year ago in which he and others spoke with Raman about the “unintended consequences” of the tax.

“It was a surprise to me that she [proposed the ULA exemptions],” Klug said, “but then as soon as she announced the mayoral thing, I went ‘Aha, that’s it.’”

Bass, I guess?

For business owners such as Klug, who is engaged in local politics, more recent years have given way to a different kind of culture in how Los Angeles City Hall operates. That’s had a trickle-over effect that defines how the city runs today, whether the subject is potholes and dirty sidewalks or the eyesore of Oceanwide Plaza and its “graffiti towers” in Downtown Los Angeles.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I would have begun with [the late Fourth District Councilman] Tom LaBonge if it was 20 years ago,” Klug said of engaging with councilmembers. “These old-line politicians would listen to you. This new DSA group, they’ve got all the answers and they kind of tune you out.”

Klug said he was recently discussing the landscape of mayoral candidates, including tech entrepreneur Adam Miller.

“We’d love to see Miller emerge as a good candidate,” he said. “If not, it would default to Bass I guess, although at this point, it’s who can do the least damage and it’s definitely Bass.”

Belack said in the 25 years he’s lived in the city he’s never been invited to so many people’s homes for fundraisers to oust a councilmember, an uptick he saw post-wildfires.

“Mayor Bass gets a lot of the blame for the fires, but the truth of the matter is our City Council is way more powerful than the mayor,” Belack said.

Asked if any of the candidates looked good, Belack said there was one for a time.

“He dropped out: [Rick] Caruso,” he said. “He was the only one and I don’t say that because he’s a real estate guy. I say that because it just seems like common sense.”

The billionaire developer was never formally in the running but had danced around the idea of another go at mayor, or even a gubernatorial run. However, he confirmed last month he would not run for any elected office.

At this point, the field of hopefuls is crowded. Bass is the incumbent. Raman was the last-minute surprise. There’s also Miller, another DSA member in Rae Chen Huang and the former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.

Even with all the names, there are few who look viable as the June primaries loom, Yukelson said.

“I think we’re all going to have to hold our noses and vote for Karen Bass,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that Rick Caruso is not coming to the table, and I don’t know who else will.”