Claim:
Following New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s November 2025 election victory, a world record 640,006 residential real estate properties were listed in 72 hours.
Rating:
Even before New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s November 2025 election victory, some people online shared claims predicting a mass exodus by businesses and/or residents from the city if Mamdani won. Similar claims, written to suggest the exodus was in progress, continued after the election.
For example, one Facebook (archived) post went so far as to claim that New York City broke a world record for residential real estate listings in 72 hours. According to that post, a real estate magnate named Joe Barron said there were 640,006 such real estate listings over a 72-hour period, and that the previous record for residential real estate listings in 72 hours was 109,009 listings in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005.
A Snopes reader emailed us to ask if the claim was true.
This claim was not true. Snopes could find no evidence to support the rumor, which appeared to be based on posts from a satirical Facebook page.
Snopes tried a number of searches on Google to find evidence supporting the numbers from the Facebook post — the searches were “640,006 listings New York City,” “640000 private home listings New York City” and “109,009 listings New Orleans.” No credible news reporting referencing these numbers turned up in the searches. If real data showed a record-breaking exodus was occurring in the United States’ largest city, mainstream news outlets would have reported on it.
A watermark in the bottom right of the image attached to the post referred to “ALLOD Satire” and said “NOTHING on this page is REAL.” That was the watermark for America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), a network of satirical social media accounts and webpages. The introduction to ALLOD’s Facebook page reiterated “nothing on this page is real.” America’s Last Line of Defense posted frequently about Mamdani following his election victory.
The claim appeared to be based on a Nov. 13 post (archived) from America’s Last Line of Defense, which purported to list “records Zohran Mamdani has already broken in New York.” Among those supposed records was “640,000 private home listings in 72 hours.” Although the image in that post didn’t match the image used in the claim with the 640,006 number, it did match that of another America’s Last Line of Defense post (archived) about New Yorkers supposedly fleeing the city after Mamdani’s election victory.
While neither of the America’s Last Line of Defense posts referenced a real estate magnate named Joe Barron, that name nonetheless was indicative of the satirical network’s connection to the claim. Joe Barron is a name America’s Last Line of Defense frequently has used in its posts to fill whatever role is needed for that particular post. Barron’s name appeared in another ALLOD post (archived) about New Yorkers leaving the city following Mamdani’s victory. According to that post, “Joseph Alex Barron III” was the fourth-generation president of the Joseph Barron Financial Consulting Firm, which was supposedly a Fortune 500 company. In reality, no such company exists.
For further confirmation that the rumor did not reflect reality, Snopes searched for residential real estate in New York City listed on the real estate portals Zillow, realtor.com and For Sale By Owner. There were 22,467 listings on Zillow (archived), 28,551 listings on realtor.com (archived) and 229 listings on For Sale By Owner (archived). Even if all of those listings went on the market during the same 72-hour period and none of those listings was for the same property — both unlikely scenarios in the first place —the total number of listings between all three websites would fall nearly 600,000 listings short of the claimed record number. If the number in the claim were accurate, that would suggest hundreds of thousands of New York City residential properties went on the market and had bids accepted within just two weeks.
For further reading, Snopes has fact-checked many claims originating from America’s Last Line of Defense, including some referencing ALLOD’s Joe Barron character. Additionally, Snopes investigated a similar claim about alleged mass resignations from New York City police following Mamdani’s election victory.
