Google billionaire Sergey Brin quietly dumped his stake in a New York City real-estate fund for six cents on the dollar — escaping the very rent-control wreckage that progressive elites like him helped engineer and that small property owners now have to survive.

Brin's investment firm, Amphitheatre LLC, sold its shares in a fund managed by A&E Real Estate — which holds nearly 5,900 NYC apartment units — back to the manager last year, according to documents filed in December and first reported by Bloomberg. The gross value of the stake was roughly $79 million. A&E confirmed it bought out a long-term investor who, according to a spokesperson, "was willing to accept six cents on the dollar on their original equity investment to divest itself from the New York City multifamily sector."

Brin, worth $265.7 billion per Forbes, can eat that loss. The small landlords who can't flee are stuck with the consequences.

The flight comes as the city's Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze increases on one million rent-stabilized apartments — a centerpiece of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's affordability campaign. Landlords warn the freeze, layered on top of 2019 state laws that already restricted their ability to raise rents to cover costs, could be the final straw. A&E says its operating expenses have climbed 78.5 percent over the past decade, outpacing rent growth, and that it is carrying $84 million in unpaid rent arrears. The University of California wrote down its own $115 million investment in the same fund by 50 percent last year.

"Institutional capital — both equity investors and lenders — are fleeing New York City's rent stabilized apartment sector," an A&E spokesperson told The Post. "They understand New York is in a doom loop created in large part by the 2019 Albany rent laws, which handcuff owners' ability to recoup costs for necessary capital repairs and improvements, coupled with rapidly rising operating expenses and a hostile political establishment determined to freeze the rents no matter the real-life implications for residents."

Mamdani, for his part, blasted A&E in January for what he called "overt cruelty" to tenants, citing thousands of alleged housing violations. Tenant activists and housing agency lawyers have accused the firm of allowing dangerous mold and bedbugs. A&E faces foreclosure on dozens of buildings. The Post framed this as landlords suffering under progressive policy; the same outlet's coverage of Mamdani's budget fight noted his own left-flank problem on housing.

And that problem is revealing. Mamdani campaigned on dropping his predecessor Eric Adams' lawsuit against expanding the CityFHEPS housing voucher program, calling Adams' court fight a "ridiculous waste of time during a housing crisis." Once in office, Mamdani continued the exact same court battle. Now he's deadlocked with the City Council over a $124.7 billion budget, with the voucher expansion — which could cost more than $10 billion over five years — as the main sticking point. Council Speaker Julie Menin and allies are pushing the expansion; Mamdani is resisting, rankling his own side.

So the socialist mayor freezes rents and fights voucher expansion, the billionaire bails at a 94 percent loss, and the working-class tenant and the small property owner are left in a deteriorating stock with no capital coming in to fix it.

The rent freeze is expected to face legal challenges. Whether the courts or the market settles this first is the open question — and who's left standing when the dust clears.