Data available via Open Data as of August 2023.
The Real Estate Lobby’s Open Door in Albany
From 2019 to 2023, the Real Estate industry spent more than $13 millions dollars on lobbying in Albany. This data analysis digs into the organizations who spent money in Albany over the period, who they paid, and where the money went.
Using data from the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government via NY Open Data, this analysis focuses on six of the top lobbying clients in the state: the Real Estate Board of New York, Inc, Homeowners for an Affordable New York LLC, Taxpayers for an Affordable NY LLC, Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), Rent Stabilization Association of NYC, INC, and the NYS Association of Realtors.
There are three different types of data available from the state lobbying records.
Compensation for lobbyists
Expenses and spending by lobbyists
Lobbying activities and targets
1. Compensation
Compensation data tells us how much real estate clients paid their lobbyists during each bi-monthly reporting period.
Total Compensation Spending By Real Estate Organizations Since 2019
The biggest spender was the Real Estate Board of New York, who spent over $3 million on lobbying in the past five years. Homeowners for an Affordable New York, formed in 2022, spent even more per year - averaging over a million dollars in lobbying compensation a year between 2022 and 2023.
Lobbying Compensation Over Time by Organization
Sometimes real estate registered as their own lobbyist. But more often, they used a lobbying firm. Fontas Advisors and Greenberg Traurig were paid the most by real estate in the past five years.
Top Lobbying Groups by Amount Compensated
2. Expenses
Lobbying groups also spend millions on particular lobbying expenses on behalf of clients, like advertising and advocacy. Real Estate clients spent an additional $5 million over the five year period from 2019 to 2023.
Total Expenses by Year
The majority of those expenses were advertising. Real Estate also spent money on consultants and advocacy - which could include legislative tracking, grassroots advocacy, or phone banking.
How Real Estate Spent Money to Influence Policy
3. Targets of Lobbying
Lobbying data also tells us how often lobbyists reached out to particular legislators on behalf of a client, and what issues they lobbied them about.
Unsurprisingly, Real Estate lobbied mostly about real estate, housing, and construction, but also played a big role in budget and tax negotiations. This data includes who real estate lobbied and on what issues and laws at both the city and state level.
Lobbyists working for real estate lobbied about Good Cause Eviction the most, more than any other piece of city or state legislation in the past five years.
Most Targeted Laws
Most Targeted People
The open door to real estate extended to senior staff in the executive chamber, and both houses of the legislature, as well as officials in city and state agencies.
Most Targeted Entities
Download all the data
Download the cleaned and filtered data for the investigated organizations here.
Compensation
Expenses
Lobbying Targets
The code for this analysis is available on Github.