There’s a new mayor (Certainly? Probably? Potentially?) coming to New York, and he has some big, big plans. Specifically for the city’s housing market.

Late Tuesday night, New York State Assemblymember and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, besting centrist candidate and former state Governor Andrew Cuomo. The win makes him the presumptive frontrunner in the city’s November election, and if he wins that election, he has promised to pursue a suite of housing reform policies. If they’re implemented, Mamdani could transform the real estate market of the largest US city — which already looks like a funhouse mirror version of the rest of the country’s.

Rental Ice Age

To say housing is the defining issue in current New York politics is likely an understatement. In January, the New York State Comptroller’s Office released a report stating that homelessness in the state increased by 53% between January 2023 and January 2024, more than four times the national average. The jump was driven largely by widening homelessness in the city, which has a population of more than 8 million. Meanwhile, rent prices continue to climb higher and higher; in May, the median monthly rent in Manhattan reached an all-time record of $4,571, according to a recent report by Douglas Elliman. Rental-listing site Zumper reported that the monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment leapfrogged 17.5% in the past year, more than in any other city. The city’s vacancy rate has fallen to 1.4%, the lowest point since 1968, according to the city comptroller.

Mamdani ran on a housing-reform platform built on two key pillars. First, implementing an immediate rent freeze for the more than 2 million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized units. Second, committing $100 billion in public funds to construct more than 200,000 new rent-stabilized units over the next decade, with fast-tracks granted to “100% affordable developments.”

The city’s landlords and developers — who almost universally backed Cuomo — are unsurprisingly critical of Mamdani’s proposals, warning that the moves could discourage new investments. On Wednesday, investors responded by fleeing companies seen as especially exposed to New York real estate:

• Shares of Flagstar — a.k.a., the major New York real estate lender previously known as New York Community Bancorp — slid 4% on Wednesday, with Deutsche Bank analysts estimating as much as one-fourth of the company’s loan book would be exposed to Mamdani’s rent regulations.
• Meanwhile, shares of SL Green, Manhattan’s largest landlord, fell over 5%, and shares of the Vornado Realty Trust fell nearly 7% on Wednesday.

Only in New York: The extreme housing crunch in New York City — where Redfin says the median home price rose almost 9% in May to $880,000 — makes it something of an outlier nationally. Elsewhere in the country, the advantage is shifting in favor of buyers. According to a recent RedFin report, sellers now outnumber buyers by half a million nationwide, the biggest gap since 2013. Rental asking prices are actually decreasing in several major cities, including Denver, Austin, and Nashville. “Only in New York” can describe a lot of wonderful, weird experiences — though right now, it mostly means wining and dining and maybe even bribing apartment brokers, as desperate rent-seekers recently told The Wall Street Journal.

One of the world’s biggest oil companies seems to have sprung a leak – no, not in one of its tankers, in its deal room. But the information that seeped out has been called into question.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that UK-based multinational oil giant Shell was in early-stage talks to acquire British rival BP, citing “people familiar with the matter.” It’s unknown if the newspaper’s tip was shucked from inside Shell’s yellow pecten scallop logo, beamed from BP’s green and yellow sunburst or sourced from a knowledgeable insider elsewhere. But one thing’s for certain: Shell denies it’s happening. “No talks are taking place,” a spokesperson told The Daily Upside.

What’s In a Leak?

According to the Journal’s report, Shell and BP reps are in active discussions, and BP was said to be considering the prospect of being taken over “carefully.” BP’s $82 billion market cap, which is less than half of Shell’s $210 billion, means if a deal ever materialized, its value would likely exceed that of the $83 billion ExxonMobil merger in 1999, factoring in the likely acquisition premium.

The possibility of a Shell-BP merger has fascinated markets and analysts since the 1990s. Speculation has intensified in recent years as BP stumbled out of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 into a bad bet on Russia’s Rosneft that went south after the country invaded Ukraine and a series of underwhelming renewables ventures. A megamerger of this sort would, theoretically, be of interest to Shell because it would vault it closer to ExxonMobil’s $468 billion market cap and likely beyond Chevron’s $248 billion. Bloomberg reported that Shell was studying the idea of acquiring its UK rival in May, something Alphavalue analysts figured would probably involve a cash-and-stock payment.

The Journal’s report on Wednesday made clear that a tie-up is “far from certain,” according to the paper’s sources. Whether the reported talks are merely “further market speculation,” as the Shell spokesperson characterized them, or not, investors took both the news and Shell’s denial seriously:

• BP shares initially rose as much as 10% following the Journal’s report Wednesday, but after Shell’s rebuff, they reversed course, narrowing their gains to 1.6%. Shell shares were down 1%.
• “As we have said many times before, we are sharply focused on capturing the value in Shell through continuing to focus on performance, discipline and simplification,” Shell’s spokesperson added. BP did not reply to a request for comment. Even without a Shell-BP deal, the energy sector still has a major pending tie-up, with Chevron’s $53 billion acquisition of Hess awaiting the outcome of a legal challenge by Exxon over a Guyana oil field in which both it and Hess have stakes.

Doubling Down: BP has pledged to boost its oil and gas production and trim its renewable investments after a run of underwhelming returns, with activist investor Elliott Management, which owns 5% of the company, leading a shareholder push for improvement. Shell has made similar pledges to focus on more profitable oil operations but ironically, Elliott took a major short position against the company in March.

Bumble’s saying, “It’s not you, it’s me,” to 30% of its employees as the struggling dating app looks to cut costs. CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who returned to her post in March to lead a turnaround, said Bumble needs a “startup mentality” to start growing again.

The app’s stock jumped 26% after Bumble announced the layoffs and lifted its revenue guidance for the quarter ending next week. Bumble expects to save $40 million annually from its 240-person layoff, according to its SEC filing.

Match Group is in the same sinking love boat. The parent company of rival dating apps Tinder and Hinge said in May it’ll cut 13% of its workforce, or about 325 people, as it struggles to keep people swiping.

Losing the Spark

Bumble and Match both reported annual declines in revenue and the number of paying daters using their apps in 2025’s first quarter, even as both focus on features meant to boost in-app spending.

Both companies offer paid tiers on their apps as well as add-ons (users can pay to have their profiles algorithmically boosted, for example). Lately, Tinder has been testing a feature that’ll allow paid users to filter matches by height.

But with about 80% of Gen Z and Millennials saying in a Forbes survey that they feel burnout from dating apps, users may be ditching apps altogether for other options:

• Ultrapremium services like Three Day Rule and NYCity Matchmaking that offer matchmaking services for thousands of dollars are winning over app-fatigued daters.
• Companies that promise to curate in-person meet-ups (mixers, speed-dating events) for singles are cropping up, like We Met IRL. Hinge has noticed the trend and announced a $1 million fund this spring for social clubs in select cities.

Designed to be Redownloaded: Some dating apps are “Designed to be Deleted” (Hinge’s catchphrase), but losing two users every time someone finds their soulmate is a tricky business model. The solution could be to juice more money out of fewer users and create a higher-quality experience to encourage that spending. Bumble’s CEO said that “more profiles does not guarantee better matches,” calling out low-quality and fake profiles. Apps are also creating extra revenue streams by looking outside of love — like Bumble’s friend-finding mode.