Eric Adams, Real Estate’s Newest Pitchman

During his tenure as New York’s mayor, Eric Adams worked closely with real estate.

Now, he’s working within it.

Six months after leaving office, Adams is the newest pitchman for several real estate-related technology companies. He is working as a business development consultant for multiple firms selling rebar, facilities cleaning and more, the former mayor told The Real Deal’s publisher Amir Korangy in a wide-ranging interview at TRD’s offices. A video of the interview is set to be released Wednesday.

“Once you’ve dealt with the City Council, the federal government, you know all personalities,” Adams said. “I know the products of what cities and corporations need because I already vetted them.”

In the interview, Adams said he is selling the products to companies as well as sovereign nations, having just returned from a trip to Nigeria. His celebrity status may be helping him close deals.

“When I reach out and say that I’m Eric Adams, they say, ‘Not Mayor Eric Adams,’ and I say, ‘Yes,’” Adams said. “I say, ‘I just want to show you the product.’”

Although he initially did not remember the name of the firms he is consulting for, he followed up later via email saying they are: MST Rebar, a green rebar company; Cherish, a health monitoring tech company; Opus, a cleaning and concierge services for facilities; WireSight, a traffic enforcement firm; GPOD, a green energy company; DAMPEN, a fire retardant product; DCL Fortress, a construction firm; and an atmospheric water generation company (Adams said the name of the company is Atmospheric Water Generation, though TRD was unable to find a company matching this name).

Despite his future being firmly in real estate, Adams was still ready to talk politics. He wished his successor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, well, but said the young democratic socialist is taking the wrong approach.

“When you look at his housing policies, it is built on idealism. The realism of implementation is different,” Adams said. “In my conversations, I’m asking developers, ‘Let’s hold on, let’s not abandon the city.’ But I don’t know how long that stays.”

Adams also reflected on his own tenure as mayor, the end of which was marked by resignations of key senior staff and a federal indictment against him. Federal prosecutors said in September of 2024 that Adams was taking bribes and soliciting illegal campaign contributions. That indictment was eventually dropped at the request of the Trump administration in April 2025.

The judge who agreed to dismiss the lawsuit wrote that the situation “smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”

Adams claimed the indictment was an attack on him by the administration of President Joe Biden for his conduct during the migrant crisis.

“Read the indictment,” he said. “I refused to stand down when hundreds of thousands of people were coming to the city without any economic support.”

When asked about members of his cabinet who allegedly flouted the law, Adams defended his choices.

“What mayor don’t appoint friends of his? That are qualified?” Adams asked. “You look at the qualification of everyone I appointed, they had qualification.”

Aside from those implicated in Adams’ own indictment, several other members of his cabinet were investigated by federal law enforcement, including schools chancellor David Banks, deputy mayor Philip Banks, buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich, police commissioner Edward Caban and aide Winnie Greco. (Ulrich is awaiting trial for an alleged bribery scheme, but no criminal charges were brought against other officials.)

Some key staffing decisions, Adams said, were the result of a dearth of willing candidates. He left one seat open on the Rent Guidelines Board, allowing Mamdani a path to a rent freeze, in part because candidates did not want to become targets of protests by tenant organizations, he said. An in-office requirement dampened interest in other government positions, he said.

“No one wanted to work,” he said. “Remember when I came in, people were telling me clearly, ‘Listen now, I love you. But you want to come — you want to sit here five days a week? Are you out of your mind?”

As for future plans, Adams said he wants to continue acquiring citizenship from different countries, having made headlines in April for becoming an Albanian citizen.

“The Albanian people embraced me here and I was able to embrace there,” Adams said. “So I’m looking to get my citizenship in Ghana, in Gambia, in Uzbekistan, from other countries as well.”

“I want to be a citizen of the globe,” he added.