Social media has changed the world and is here to stay with everyone looking for ways to adapt not to get left behind. It is no longer just a way to communicate with friends but a powerful tool to establish your personal brand, attract more clients, and take your business to the next level.

We sat down with a prominent social media manager and a content creator, Lizza Prigozhina, to discuss her work with social media, the latest trends, and how individuals and companies can leverage. Lizza has achieved great success working with multiple clients in the real estate industry and constantly expanding.

What led you to starting a career in social media?

I grew up seeing how social media is transforming our reality. While many saw it as a challenge, I saw it as an opportunity. Social media was underestimated for a long time, but people are starting to realize that it is a powerful tool that has revolutionized the world. It’s a tool for education, entertainment, connecting businesses with their audiences, creating relatable content, and so much more. A lot of people want to promote themselves and their businesses, to create a personal brand, but don’t know where to begin and how it works, which is where I come in. My goal is to find what differentiates my clients because every person is different even if they’re in the same industry, there’s space for everyone to thrive.

Why has so much of your focus been in real estate?

I knew that real estate was a huge part of New York’s life and economy, and I saw that there was potential to shake things up a little, to modernize and revolutionize the industry in many ways. Then I happened to meet an incredible real estate agent, Alexander Zakharin, funnily enough through TikTok. We met up and I proposed that we take his social media to another level. He was very open to it and we started working together almost right away. In a few months, the number of followers went from 90k to 300k, and we recently celebrated 550k! We’ve done a ton of exciting collaborations with other agents and influencers, and I have more incredible clients now too, constantly expanding.

Who else have you been working and collaborating with?

Alexander and I had some incredible collaborations with Erik Conover, who has over 2 million subscribers on YouTube and an exciting hi-tech company Bumblebee Spaces that have Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher as investors. The videos we created with their innovative furniture have over 30 million views. I’m also working with an amazing agent at Douglas Elliman – Christina Kremidas, recently got great clients at Nest Seekers International – The Kim Team, my newest clients Marko Arsic and Jason Lau at Corcoran, and more. I have a lot coming up but will keep it a secret for now.

How has your work been beneficial for your clients?

In a lot of ways, from new clients to networking and establishing your personal brand to becoming more well-known in the industry and outside of it, and in many other ways. Alexander has gotten a lot of business through social media, he’s currently the most followed real estate agent on TikTok in New York and has become very well-known thanks to that. One of my clients recently got a $3M seller through TikTok and the examples of how it’s been beneficial to my clients are endless.

Do you work on your own social media?

I do work on it but it’s hard to find the time. I focus on fashion, humor, and try to be creative with everything I do. One of my recent videos garnered over 1.5 million views.

Have you worked out a formula for success?

There’s no one specific formula. I always have an individual approach with each client as they are all different. Like I mentioned in the beginning, you have to find what differentiates the person, what makes them unique, and how they can thrive in the realm of social media. Aside from that, all videos need to have a purpose, whether to educate or make someone laugh, cry, feel motivated, inspired and so on. At the end of the day, if you’re eager to be on social media and willing to step outside of your comfort zone, I will help you make great things happen, but there isn’t a single formula to success that would fit every person.

What’s your advice for those looking to start doing social media but feeling intimidated or simply not knowing where to start?

Social media can certainly feel overwhelming and I always say start small. Start recording yourself, talking to the camera, getting comfortable with it, watch TikToks and what others are doing, but make sure you’re not just copying content. Ask yourself “What makes me different? Why do people work with me?” and then start showcasing that on social media. People want to see personality. You’ve got to find a way of combining your business with who you are, which is what will really allow you to leverage.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— After its glitzy grand opening at Hudson Yards just last year, Neiman Marcus has recently declared bankruptcy and announced that it will close the location, Bloomberg News reports. The news comes as an ugly shock to the local retail landscape and Hudson Yards’ main developer, Related Companies, helmed by billionaire Trump supporter Stephen Ross.

Neiman Marcus was meant to be the anchor retail business drawing customers to The Shops at Hudson Yards. Its closure means bad news for the other 70-odd businesses relying on the foot traffic that Neiman Marcus could generate.

Even pre-COVID there were doubts whether Neiman Marcus could succeed in the crowded NYC luxury market while also facing an ever-growing threat from online retail. At the time, retail experts claimed that they felt there was still a sizeable customer base seeking a physical shopping experience. Now, a representative for the business admitted to the Real Deal that the impacts of COVID-19 had changed their calculations. Industry experts are estimating that COVID-19 will only cement a long-germinating consumer trend favoring online shopping and change retail “forever.”

Developers rushed to re-market the empty space as a an attractive office space, perhaps to Facebook, which already rents about 1.5 million square feet in the Hudson Yards complex. Yet office space is traditionally less lucrative than retail space. The developers may feel the cost difference, especially if other retail businesses follow suit. The mall-model may vanish rapidly in the American landscape, including at Hudson Yards.

It is also harder for a commercial business to succeed in a complex dominated by offices; the Shops at Hudson Yards is already on track to be less than half retail space. Neiman Marcus even cited the unfavorable distribution in the building, with more office and restaurant tenants than commercial retail, as one of the motivating factors in its decision to leave. What will other businesses decide to do when the time comes for them to renew their leases? With all retail struggling right now, other major chains with leases at Hudson Yards including Brooks Brothers, Muji, and J.Crew-owned Madewell have also filed for bankruptcy. None have yet announced if they plan to stay at the location or if they too will try to exit.

The closure of Neiman Marcus is only the latest of many foreboding signs for commercial real estate in New York. If fallout from COVID-19 drives more retailers to follow suit declaring bankruptcy and withdrawing from leases early, at Hudson Yards or across the city, it will certainly mean a massive restructuring of city life and a re-assessment for the developers with big stakes in commercial real estate of all kinds.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— A shocking report second-quarter report from Miller Samuel shows that median sales price in Manhattan has fallen by 17.7 percent compared to the second quarter of 2019, and the number of sales in Manhattan has fallen by 54.1% percent. Has COVID-19 taken its toll? An analysis from Curbed suggests that realtors need not panic—yet.

Johnathan Miller, author of the Elliman report, cautioned casual observers to be mindful of the wild fluctuations in 2019. While the market was stagnating in the first quarter, with only a 0.2 percent year-over-year increase in the median sales price, the second quarter of 2019 saw an astonishing 10.5 percent year-over-year increase. Miller attributes this spike to the implementation of a modest mansion tax on homes over $1 million, starting July 1 of 2019. Miller suggests that the sharp jump came from the first half of the second quarter, when buyers interested in the luxury homes rushed to market before the tax kicked in. Compared to the second quarter of 2018, the median sales price in the second quarter of 2020 have decreased by a more modest 10 percent.

Still panicking? Miller warns that this number is still artificially low. Recall that the entire economy was shut down for months. While real estate was declared an essential industry as early as April, buyers and sellers were both on lockdown and in-person showings were prohibited in New York, deterring many potential clients.

The real estate market started strong in 2020. An optimistic report noted that after nearly two years of modest stagnation in the sales market, the number of sales was 13.5 percent higher than the previous year, continuing a trend from the last two quarters. However, COVID-19 quickly threw a wrench into even the most experienced agents’ predictions. While many hoped that 2020 would be a year of recovery for the real estate market, we probably won’t know the real impact of COVID until the central crisis passes.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)—  Housing advocacy groups have worked with progressive New York senators to introduce three new housing bills that they say will provide tenants and homeowners with the grace period they need to recover from the economic shock of COVID-19. Failure to protect struggling tenants now, they warn, will leave thousands of New Yorkers homeless and ultimately only create deeper and harder-to-address societal problems in the long run. The bill provides protections for tenants, co-ops, and some small landlords, but overall, investors, speculators, developers, and corporate landlords, who make up the majority of landlords in NYC, will likely not be pleased.

The first bill is the Emergency Housing Stability and Displacement Prevention Act, sponsored by New York Senator Zellnor Myrie, whose district spans Sunset Park, Gowanus, lower Crown Heights and East Flatbush. The act would extend the current moratorium on evictions and foreclosures for another year after the state of emergency was over and would apply to both residential and commercial tenants.  It would also block landlords from taking a tenant to housing court, unlike a loophole in the current laws which saw housing courts reopen in June. Under the current laws, landlords could take a tenant to court early and ask them to prove “financial hardship” related to COVID-19 in order to benefit from the eviction moratorium. The bill also cites systemic racism as an urgent motivation for housing justice initiatives. Recent reports have shown dramatic overlap between the primarily Black and Latinx neighborhoods most heavily hit by COVID-19 and the neighborhoods with the most housing violations and highest levels of rent burden. Progressive politicians make the case that COVID-19 relief, housing rights, and racial justice are deeply intertwined problems.

The second bill is the perhaps the most well know, introduced by celebrity congresswoman Ilhan Omar and supported by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act of 2020 would cancel all rent and mortgages from March 2020 until the end of the state of emergency, plus a 90-day grace period. Its advocates argue that with 11 percent of the country still out of a job, even with generous eviction moratoriums in place, the majority of renters will be unable to pay back the many months of rent they may have missed. It would also prevent the non-payment of rent from impacting a tenant or homeowners credit score. While the act would provide protections for small landlords, it would not provide protections for the large corporate landlords, who make up the majority of landlords in New York.

The final bill to reach the New York Senate is the Housing Access Voucher Program, sponsored by Senator Brian Kavanagh, whose district spans lower Manhattan and North Brooklyn. The bill proposes vouchers that would cover the cost on market-rate units that such tenants would be otherwise unable to afford. Although a similar program already exists through Section 8 vouchers, the Housing Access Voucher Program would be the first of its kind to include protection for undocumented Americans as well. The bill aims to distribute vouchers equally between housing insecure renters and homeless New Yorkers. Its proponents hope that providing direct housing assistance will ease the burden on shelters and provide protection to to homeless.

Housing advocates goals are two-fold: both preserving affordable housing for current tenants and preventing speculative investments that, advocates say, will accelerate gentrification in a few years, when the crisis has passed.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— After months of caution, De Blasio’s decision to partially re-open New York City’s public schools has elicited panic and confusion among concerned parents. The Brick Underground’s prescient story on a possible “second exodus” of New York families provides another possible interpretation of the city’s motives: preventing the flight of families who provide valuable tax revenue for the city.

As more New Yorkers seek property outside of the city, many more reported that they too might leave if schools were to remain entirely closed in the fall. Already the city has seen well-off New Yorkers fleeing to far-off suburbs they once may have eyed with scorn. This comes at a time when New York City was already forced to make painful cuts to its budget, with thousands laid off during the pandemic.

Yet it need not be so dire. As of July 13, there have been 315 new cases reported in New York City. That’s a far cry from New York’s April peak of 8,021 new cases, or Florida’s record setting 11,458 new cases, reported on the Fourth of July, which continue to rise while the GOP-controlled state stubbornly refuses to enforce any precautions. Other countries that have recovered from earlier COVID spikes only to reopen later have not yet reported any significant rise in cases—so long as the necessary precautions are in place. The only question is whether New York’s beleaguered DOE can invest in the needed testing and infrastructure to protect its most vulnerable students.

(NEW YORK, NEW  YORK)— In the past few months, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) is one of the many mundane bureaucracies to take the back seat as local politicians try to contain COVID, mitigate economic fallout, re-balance the city’s budget, and grapple with months long protests condemning the racist violence of America’s police forces and calling to defund the NYPD. With New York recently past Stage 3 of reopening and anticipating Stage 4, many developers are saying that it is now time to focus on restarting the ULURP process so that their projects can proceed. They claim that the new projects will create jobs and help restart the economy.

ULURP has been suspended since late March, in direct response to the COVID-19 panic. ULURP is the bureaucratic bane of many developers, stalling projects by many months while rarely actually denying developer demands, much to the outrage of many local activists. The lengthy process requires the City Council, the City Planning Commission, the Borough President of the affected borough, and the mayor to convene multiple times to discuss the plans and vote. There are also mandatory public hearings. Any meetings in the near future would likely have to be remote.

With limited time to devote to ULURP at the moment, Vicki Been, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, has outlined the criteria to determine which projects will receive priority consideration, The City reports. Been’s demands orient around the considerations: “Does this project provide services, infrastructure, housing in a neighborhood disproportionately affected by COVID? Does it bring infrastructure that can help the city recover? Does it bring jobs and what kind of jobs and to what neighborhoods?” These considerations are particularly important at this sensitive time when racial tensions are high. Rezoning decisions that tout new jobs also often speed up gentrification and push out low income residents, pitting developers against locals.

Already the prioritized projects have attracted controversy. Using the criteria outlined by Been, the city selected the Gowanus rezoning as one of its first priorities. It has also already ignited a predictable spat between local advocates, who are demanding more commitments to neighborhood improvement before supporting the rezoning request, and developers, who, this time, find themselves aided by local “YIMBY” activists. These roiling contentions can neither be resolved nor even given public hearing until ULURP begins again, which is perhaps best illustration of why developers feel that ULURP hearings must be restarted soon.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— New York landlords are finally beginning to drop rental prices modestly in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The change in the housing market has come sooner than experts had predicted based on past recession patterns. As recently as June 18^th, StreetEasy economist Nancy Wu speculated to The New York Times that it could take up to 18 months for the COVID-19 recession to be reflected in the housing market. However, the most recent report from NYT implies that impacts will be felt much sooner. Median rental prices have already dropped 4.8 percent compared to the same time last year.

As demand falls and vacancies reach record highs, beleaguered tenants have eagerly anticipated a shift of the market in their favor. Surveys suggested at least a third of all renters, of both commercial and residential properties, were unable to pay their rent in full for July. At the same time, many tenants, especially younger tenants with families to return to and renters with significant means, have fled the city, sometimes even for the long haul. The density of New York has become an unnerving drawback in the face of COVID-19. With unemployment skyrocketing from 3.6 percent in January, a 50-year record low, to 11.1% by July; many companies moving to remote work, possibly even permanently; and most of the major attractions of New York life on hold, at least until an invention of a vaccine or a cure, many are seeing fewer reasons to pay sky high NYC rents.

However, landlords are proving slow to respond to market changes or even outright unwilling to adjust to the market as much as tenants had hoped. In fact, in mid-May, Realtor.com reported that rents had continued to rise, according to data gathered from newly signed leases. The recent report from New York Times is the first good sign for  tenants.

Yet it’s not clear if concessions that landlords are starting to offer will be proportionate to the impacts that renters feel. To tenants who have lost their jobs and face months of back pay on missed rents, landlords seem obstinately opposed to negotiating the scale of relief that they feel they would need. When the temporary eviction block is lifted at the end of August, housing advocates anticipate up to 50,000 cases will be brought to court. State instituted rent-relief plans have also largely aided landlords by providing rent-covering vouchers, rather than tenants, who have mostly received very little. Meanwhile, the much welcome rental decreases have yet to make housing affordable to the broad majority, especially workers in high-contact, low wage industries. This month’s modest decrease has brought the median rental price to $3,378 a month. According to NYC rental laws, a family would have to make a minimum of $135,120 to afford such an apartment. The area median income for a family of three in New York City is $102,4000.

It is also not clear, at least to this observer, that the falling rental prices are truly a response to COVID-19 or a normal market adjustment in response to the record highs and steady increases that we saw in the Manhattan rental market last year. June 2019 saw record high median rental prices for one-bedrooms; August saw those records broken again; the trend continued in December 2019 again. Rents were rose at faster rates than they had since 2016. While the most recent news from NYT cites an increase in concessions in the summer of 2020 (offers including a free month of rent, a reduction in fees, an addition of amenities, etc.) this was only after eight straight months of continual decrease in concessions in 2019.

While everyone in New York is experiencing whiplash in wake of the pandemic, New York landlords are still more insulated from the market shocks that many of their tenants have experienced. The majority of landlords in NYC are not the fabled “mom-and-pop” landowners but mostly large institutions owning at least 15 buildings or more. While the rapidity of the market flux may come as a shock to landlords now, the falling rents still have yet to reflect the full reality of the COVID-19 crisis. Perhaps they never will.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— After the Small Business Administration released its report on recipients of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), numerous stories emerged of the not-so-small businesses who also received the coveted loans. Among them is luxury real estate developer Extell, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company is known in New York City for its glitzy and sometimes controversial luxury developments like the Central Park Tower, which looms above billionaire’s row and drew public ire for the long shadows it casts on Central Park, and Hudson Yards.

The report from WSJ reveals that Extell received somewhere between $2.5 million to $6.5 million in loans in total, a number that grates on all those who know the valuation of the company’s numerous investments across the city. Central Park Tower alone cost $3 billion to build. The SBA’s report shows that while 86% of applicants received less than $150,000, 75% of the total funds were distributed as loans between $150,000 and $10 million. To put it another way, 75% of the total funding available went to 15% of the total applicants. Only around 0.1% of all loan applicants received more than $5 million—Extell among them.

Long before the report was released, the PPP had been dogged by accusations of corruption. The PPP was designed to benefit small businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees; however, no ceiling was set on the valuation of the company seeking a loan. Controversies arose as early as April, when stories emerged about small business owners denied PPP loans due to lack of funds while simultaneously it was revealed that giants from the pharmaceutical, financial, and hospitality industries had received millions of dollars in lump sums. Ashford Hospitality, which operates the Atlanta Ritz Carlton, received a grand total of $67 million through applications filed by three subsidiary companies. The backlash was so intense that the biggest beneficiaries promised to pay back what they had received.

April’s controversy only applied to publicly traded companies whose finances were already available for scrutiny. The SBA’s latest report, which uncovers loans received by companies like Extell, was only released under intense pressure from newsrooms like ProPublica and other DC watchdogs. Still, the record only names entities who received more than $150,000. Journalists are still trying to pressure the agency to release the other names.

Extell’s CEO, Gary Barnett, is unlikely to be fazed by the controversy. He is hated both by housing activists and envious rivals. Most notoriously, he was one of the few developers willing to die on the “poor door” hill, defending his decision to create a separate entrance for the low- and middle-income residents of luxury buildings (affordable housing often affords developers major tax breaks and favorable consideration for rezoning applications). He has made notoriously few friends among fellow developers over the years, including a few clashes with Donald Trump, but has agents clamoring to sell his ritzy luxury condos. At Central Park Tower, the starting price for a two-bedroom was $7 million; eighteen units were priced above $60 million.

Barnett has also been credited with creating New York’s luxury living glut. Even before the COVID crisis many were speculating on the long-term viability of his investments. As early as 2014 the billionaire clientele he catered to were  often facing reversals of their personal fortunes. A crisis at Extell may have been long brewing

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— With COVID dominating the news cycle, the contentious legislation prohibiting landlords from offloading broker fees to tenants has taken a backseat in recent coverage. The suit brought by REBNY against the state was supposed to go to court last Friday, March 13. A recent report from CurbedNY suggests the new date is sent for June.

The new interpretation of June 2019’s rent regulations sent shock waves through the real estate industry. Misleading headlines announcing “No more broker’s fees” panicked brokers and real estate firms in the city. In fact, broker’s fees remain in place: the only difference is that the proposed interpretation says that tenants would not pay broker’s fees on behalf of a landlord. Brokers panicked, anticipating that they would have to accept lower commissions from landlords, whereas tenants usually have no choice in the matter.

Facing a REBNY-led suit against the Department of State, state Justice Michael Mackey temporary suspended enforcement of the interpretation to give both parties time to prepare their case. The temporary suspension was only to be expected, given the suddenness of the new interpretation.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has now requested another extension on behalf of the DOS. The new date is set for June 12, near the anniversary of last year’s rent reform laws. While REBNY and other firms claim that the interpretation will decimate the real estate industry, the interpretation is in line with standard practices in most other cities. Tenants and tenants’ rights advocacy groups overwhelmingly support the change.

(BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)— The legendary and even ominous “Watchtower” building that has housed the world headquarters for Jehovah’s witnesses since the 1960s has recently been converted to a modern, airy commercial property with office, retail and hospitality space for rent. Now, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports, the complex will soon house eleven beautiful gardens as well.

Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been slowly selling off property for years, the sale of their iconic Watchtower building in Brooklyn Heights first made headlines in 2015, when the Witnesses put the complex on the market in a move upstate to Warwick, New York. The sale fetched a pretty penny in one of Brooklyn’s hottest neighborhoods: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported rumors that developers (Jared Kushner, of Trump-related infamy) had been willing to pay up to $400 million for the staggering 735,000 property featuring stunning 360 views, including prime views of the Brooklyn Bridge. Alluding to its premier vistas, the developers have renamed the complex The Panorama.

In Summer 2019, The Brooklyn Eagle reported a sneak peek into the extensive renovations that developers had undertaken in the past four years. Before the Witnesses purchased it in 1969, it was a former pharmaceutical factory. In the ensuing decades, it’s been almost completely closed to outsiders. Photos from The Brooklyn Eagle highlight just how successful that transformation has ben, with stuffy, secretive interiors transformed into airy, light-filled spaces. A whole floor with stunning 20-foot ceilings that had been a windowless “black box” for a recording studio was outfitted with full-wall windows. The formerly secretive complex now features a selfie-station on the roof.

Gothamist also reported last Spring that the complex had also sheltered some spooky hidden tunnels, first built back in the building’s factory days. The tunnels served as an easy way for Witnesses to move between buildings in the complex, without ever having to leave. They were also, reportedly, as creepy as they sound, filled with “chain link cages” that stood in for office cubicles, according to eyewitness reports. The tunnels are now being filled in, according to the same report—some things might be better left unknown.

The most recent report from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle focuses on the landscape designs that are opening up the imposing exterior. The formerly walled-off complex was re-landscaped by Terrain-NYC, its huge eight-foot high walls knocked down to open up the building for passerby to enjoy.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK)— Agents are seeing home sales fall as panicked buyers back out of deals and sellers hesitate to invite strangers into their home for showings, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The virus strikes the city at a particularly unfortunate time, halting home sales at the time when they would normally be at their peak. According to The National Association of Realtors (NAR), 40% of home sale deals are closed March through June. Now, brokers told WSJ that they are seeing sellers back out of deals rather than inviting a potentially infected individual into their home. Recommended self-quarantines are also isolating potential sellers and deterring motivated buyers who might otherwise be hitting the streets in search of a new apartment.

The dip in the market runs contrary to analysts’ predictions for 2020. With mortgage rates at record lows—just 3.6% on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage—real estate market experts had hoped for a buying boom to revive a market that has been slowing rapidly in recent months. Coronavirus fears have dealt a considerable blow to that dream, making a 2020 housing recession seem increasingly likely (though not inevitable).

New York hit new levels of panic this week, with 200 cases reported as of March 11—up exponentially from the 11 infected individuals who were infected just one week before. Analysts are looking to other booming markets hit hard by the coronavirus to estimate the impact on real estate in the city. The Real Deal took a look at formerly-booming markets in Seoul and Milan, two up-and-coming cities hit especially hard by recent outbreaks. They found that residential sales were down by 12% in Milan since the start of 2020. In Korea, home sales are down by a shocking 80% since the first reported outbreak in early march, and by nearly 90% in Seoul alone.

While predictions seem grim, Harvard health urges citizens to stay calm and practice good hygiene. The flu, whose threat millions of Americans have braved daily and without thought, has claimed 25,000 victims this season. While the novelty and severity of coronavirus easily incites panic, it is important to stay calm.