Ken interviews Financial strategist and policy expert Steve Cotton.

Steve discusses solutions for the housing crisis in NYC and nationwide. Steve also shares his outlook on the economy for the coming months.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Mark Simone Show on seven to ten.
Wi Kim from Mark Today, here's Ken Rosato. Really good
to be with you on a Friday morning. And the
stock market took quite a hit yesterday. It was down
about seven hundred points. And while there are some sectors
of the economy that appear to be doing better everyday,
items like groceries are not really coming down like we

(00:23):
thought they might at this point. I mean it's still
fairly early on, but with the tariffs and whatnot, things
are still somewhat expensive. Eggs are down, yes, butter's down,
but everything else is pretty much up. So a lot
of people are stretching their dollars to make ends meet.
Steve Cotton is a financial strategist. He's here to talk
about how consumer sentiment appears to be dropping for the

(00:43):
month of November and what we can do to safeguard
our dollars. Good morning you, Steve, Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Good morning Ken, Thanks for having me you.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Bet So, what is looking up in our economy? What
is looking down?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, energy prices have come down significantly. Matter if I
heard this morning that there are twenty eight states where
the price of gas is already down to about two
dollars eighty cents a gallon. Wow, that's outstanding. When you
get energy prices down due to expanded production, which is
what the Trump administration has been trying to do, that

(01:18):
has a ripple effect all throughout every product that is
made with petroleum products. We still have high housing costs,
but housing is largely a regional and a local phenomena.
It's due to shortage of supply, excess demand, persistently high
interest rates in terms of long term mortgage rates, which

(01:41):
the administration does not control. It's due to lots of factors,
population shifts, those kinds of things. So there are some
things the administration has had some success in addressing and
some things that are just beyond their control.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And Steve, I'm glad you brought up housing because here
in New York where we are, we have something called
rent control. And for those unfamiliar, you know there's a board,
a rent control board, And you know, while the state
and the city tell the landlords you must do this
to your property. You must put in fire extinguishers, you
must have this, you must you must maintain the plumbing.
You might and there are all these millions of dollars

(02:18):
a year of expenses that the landlords have to do.
They're not allowed to just raise the rent to pay
for it. So I don't know where the money's supposed
to come from. But the rent Control Board determines how
much or if the rent can go up or down
every I guess it's every other year or whatever. I'm
not living in New York City anymore, so if I
got the exact time that this happens. But the point is,

(02:38):
when you have rent control and people are locked in
at a good rate, they tend not to move. And
so when you have people not moving, you have no availability.
And when there's no availability of real estate, what happens
to the price of real estate? I leave it.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, that's that's true, right when when availability is limited,
prices are higher, right, and they re remain higher. The
problem of housing in this country is one of supply.
We have underinvested in building new housing stock for twenty
twenty years. They are communities that are trying to catch up.

(03:13):
But there is nothing wrong with requiring landlords and property
owners to maintain proper cleanliness, security, fire controls. You know
decent decent you know water, decent plumbing, and you know
there there are a lot of cases where we've seen
slum lords. Oh yes, do those things. And government should

(03:39):
has an obligation to help support consumers and provide minimal
living standards. However, you've got to be careful with rent
controls because if you if you force rents below a
certain level where it's economic for those landlords to make
those improvements, you end up with a housing show. And

(04:00):
this is just economics. We've seen it not only in
New York, We've seen it in other places around the
country and around the world. So it's a balancing act. Always.
We have to hold landlords and property owners to decent,
minimal standards. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you
go overboard and you mandate expenses, but you limit their

(04:22):
ability to recoup those costs, then you get a shortage.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
I'm with you just so that we remind everybody. This
is seven to ten wo R The Voice of New York,
The Mark Simone Show at a Friday, Ken Rosotto and
for Mark and we are speaking with financial strategist Steve Cotton.
We appreciate you coming in, Stephen. You know, we have
something else here in New York City that's sort of
unique to us. We have these giant, eleven hundred and
twelve hundred foot tall, skinny skyscrapers that they've been building

(04:49):
in the last five to ten years. They're dotting the
entire landscape of Manhattan, parts of Queens and Brooklyn as well.
And the problem is many of those units are empty
because people from far countries, millionaires, billionaires from other countries
buy those units as investments. They don't even go there,
they don't even live there. The buildings are literally empty,
while there are thousands upon thousands of people all over

(05:11):
the city who desperately could use a place to live.
What could we possibly do to change that? The city
has tried to artificially affect change by saying, Okay, if
you're going to build that building, you have to do
twenty percent of the apartments for moderate income housing or
low income housing. But that can only help so much.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Well, that's a problem, and it's a little bit unique
to New York. There are other communities where that kind
of thing structurally has happened. You can't you can't fence
out foreign investment or make it unattractive to foreign investors. However,
we do have an obligation to our own citizens first

(05:49):
and We've got to really address the housing crisis through
expanded supply. That means incentivizing builders to build, lowering interest rates,
owering the cost of construction. It's a combination of things,
but we really need a more creative approach to it
than we've seen in the past.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well, financial strategist Steve Conton. That is great advice and
always good to have somebody who has the bigger view
of the overall picture. We appreciate you coming on the
Mark Simon Show today.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well, thank you, Ken, a pleasure to be with you
as always go New York Baby.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Amen. All right, you got it, Steve. Have a good day, sir.
Partly cloudy today and tomorrow. High's low fifties, maybe maybe
some showers tomorrow night, and partly cloudy Sunday, temps getting
a little warmer into the upper fifties. We're gonna take
your calls next eight hundred three to two one zero
seven ten. Eight hundred three to two one zero seven ten.

(06:44):
It's Ken rozottowin from Mark on your Friday seven to
ten w o R. We're coming right back