Mayor de Blasio and NYC's First Lady will only pay less than $9,000 in property taxes for their two homes next year

Patch

 A sneak peek at Mayor Bill de Blasio's anticipated property taxes next year has hizzoner's online critics wondering: "How is it that @NYCMayor only pays $4493.33 on a $1.76 Million dollar Park Slope home, when other NY'ers are taxed through the roof?" 

Twitter user @odonnell_r posed this question along with a photo of de Blasio's and his wife Chirlane McCray's notice of property tax for their 11th Street property. The Jan. 15 notice and the amount has been confirmed by Patch through public Department of Finance record


But it doesn't tell the whole story — a twisty tale of multiple homes and New York City's antiquated tax system that many, including the mayor himself, have criticized as unfair and due for change.

For one, it's not de Blasio's and McCray's only high-dollar Park Slope property on 11th Street — they own a $1.88 million home also with an estimated $4,493.33 in upcoming taxes.
That's about $9,000 in expected taxes on just shy of $4 million worth of property, for the math-averse.

It's not a secret de Blasio and McCray own homes in Park Slope. The houses gained attention in 2017 when one went up for rent to nonsmokers without pets at $1,825 a month, Politico reported.

The homes' taxes at that time about $3,600 each, according to records.

So when the mayor received notices dated Jan. 15, 2020 about his expected upcoming property taxes he actually learned his taxes would go up.


Several Twitter users expressed surprise at de Blasio's taxes.

"I pay 4900 for my home in Staten Island , it's worth is about 550,000. How does he do it," wrote @Joeyjoe15090312.

"I pay double that on an attached house in queens. Doubled since this fool took office. This has to change and fast," wrote @Onivasa316.

This post is for all you readers of Queens Crap that pay property taxes in this state

Gothamist


Governor Andrew Cuomo's latest pitch to expand Penn Station is an overflowing grab bag of promises to commuters and city residents to improve what the governor called in his budget speech yesterday the station’s “seven levels of hell”. The governor is proposing 40 percent more train capacity, airier concourses and unspecified new development in a "cohesive transit-oriented district." 

The plan also boasts an accordingly mammoth price tag: $8 billion to buy up an entire block of Midtown property, according to one estimate, most of which Cuomo hasn't yet identified specific funds for beyond the idea of siphoning off future retail rents and property taxes.

Meanwhile, sitting atop the now-buried train station is one of the state's biggest poster children for corporate tax giveaways: Madison Square Garden, which thanks to a state law passed at the behest of then-mayor Ed Koch in 1982 has now gone 37 consecutive years without paying property taxes. 

The total cost in lost revenue to the city over that time period is now $555 million, according to the latest calculations by the city's Independent Budget Office. If current property value trends continue, MSG's total tax break could clear $1 billion by 2030.

It's an alarmingly high figure, made even more so by the fact that the tax break, first proposed by Koch in order to encourage the Knicks and Rangers to renovate rather than moving to New Jersey, was, according to the mayor, initially supposed to end after just ten years. ("I went to bed at night believing it was a 10-year abatement," Koch told the Times years later.)

In the decades since, MSG's eternal tax break has become a white whale for budget reformers and enraged Knicks fans alike; possible repeal has become a recurring feature of IBO's annual budget options documents offering ways to saving the city money.

Asked for an explanation of the continued need for the tax break, a Madison Square Garden spokesperson provided this statement to Gothamist: "We appreciate that people have their opinions about our location, but the truth is that Madison Square Garden’s tax abatement pales in comparison to the billions in public benefits received by the other New York sports venues.”

 The decades-long inaction can partially be explained by the odd nature of the tax break: It's the city losing tax revenue as a result, but the city council has no say over state law. While the state legislature could repeal the law at any time, it's under little pressure to do so given that none of the money would go toward filling state budget holes.

And then, there is the considerable pressure the legislature is likely under from Cuomo, who has long counted MSG owner James Dolan and his family as major campaign donors, though that seems to be on the wane since they sold off Cablevision to Dutch telecom giant Altice for $17.7 billion in 2016. (Then-MSG business partner Irving Azoff did give $10,000 to Cuomo's reelection campaign in 2017, and MSG itself is a regular donor to both Democratic and Republican state legislative campaign committees.)

 

Fresh Meadows landlords slapped with lawsuit by AG

From The Real Deal:

A pair of Queens landlords spent years cheating the state out of almost $500,000 in property taxes by manipulating the 421a program, according to a lawsuit from the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

The lawsuit seeks to ban Queens landlords Ram Cohen, Eldad Cohen and their company ERC Holding, LLC from participating in New York’s real estate industry. It also aims to force them to repay the property taxes they dodged, along with the profits they made from selling their building at 71-44 160th Street in Fresh Meadows.

The brothers finished building the 10-unit building in 2009 and applied for a tax exemption with the city under the 421a law, according to New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood. The exemption requires the Cohens to abide by rent stabilization laws, but the suit alleges that they stuck tenants with unregulated leases instead. The attorney general’s office previously ordered the Cohens to start treating their tenants as rent-stabilized in 2014, but they did not do so, the lawsuit says.

The Cohens also tried to make their building appear more valuable than it actually was by listing inflated rents on all of their leases and giving tenants separate riders where they would agree to pay lower rents, the suit says. They kept these riders secret from banks, regulatory agencies and a prospective buyer to make the building appear more valuable than it really was and sold it in 2016 for $3.75 million, according to Underwood.

Property taxes go up but salaries don't

From the NY Post:

The city’s property-tax rate has grown at triple the rate of New Yorkers’ incomes over the past decade, making it tough for residents at the lower end of the economic scale to make ends meet, Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office said Wednesday.

Property taxes are eating up ever larger portions of homeowners’ income — particularly for households making less than $50,000 a year, Stringer’s office found.

That group saw its average property-tax burden nearly double between 2005 and 2016, growing from 6.6 percent to 12.7 percent of income.

“Property taxes are rising too fast and incomes are rising too slow — and it’s becoming harder than ever for already struggling New Yorkers to get ahead,” said Stringer.

In 2005, homeowners making less than $50,000 paid an average property tax of $1,940. By 2016, they were shelling out $3,849 — while median salaries for the group stayed relatively flat at just under $33,000 per year.

Higher-earning families also had nothing to cheer about.

Those making between $50,000 and $100,000 annually devoted 3.4 percent of their earnings to property taxes in 2005 and 5.4 percent by 2016.

The tax burden on households in the $100,000- to $250,000-a-year bracket had less to complain about, with the portion of their paychecks that went to property taxes rising from 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent.

Queens has good tax value (whatever that means)

From the Times Ledger:

SmartAsset, a financial technology company, released a study last week comparing counties across the United States by measuring local crime rates and school quality relative to their effective property tax rates. Among the city’s five boroughs Queens homeowners fared the best in terms of value.

Queens ranked ninth out of New York state’s 62 counties and was one of two counties within the city to make it in the top 10 in terms of value.

With its 0.84 percent property tax rate, it received an eight out of 10 school rating, and had 1,734 crimes per 100,000 people, according to the July 27 study.

In comparison, the statewide average rate for property taxes is 1.65 percent, according to SmartAsset. Outside the city, tax rates in New York counties exceed 2.5 percent.

Queens had a better school rating then Richmond County (Staten Island), which had a seven out of 10 school rating, 1,531 crimes per 100,000 people and .87 percent in property taxes, according to the study. Kings County (Brooklyn) had a .65 percent property tax, a nine out of 10 school rating, but 2,2276 crimes per 100,000 crimes were committed there.

Well, it certainly seems we get what we pay for, doesn't it? (end sarcasm)

The grass isn't greener in the suburbs

From the Real Deal:

High property taxes are virtually inescapable for people living within commuting distance of New York—and the new tax law will make this burden even worse.

Nine of the 10 counties in the U.S. with the highest average property tax bills from 2017 were in the New York City suburbs, with Westchester topping the list at $17,179, according to Bloomberg. The sole exception was Marin County in California, where the average bill was $11,295.

New York’s Rockland County took the number two spot, while Nassau County landed at number five. Connecticut’s Fairfield County was number eight, and the rest of the spots all went to counties in New Jersey: Essex, Bergen, Union, Morris and Passaic.

Should pieds-à-terre be taxed more?

From Brick Underground:

The number of apartments being used as pieds-à-terre and short-term vacation rentals in New York City has spiked by over 20,000 in the last three years, and such apartments now make up 2.1 percent of all housing in New York City, according to census data recently released by the city.

The number of apartments listed on the most recent Housing and Vacancy Survey as vacant because of "seasonal, recreational, or occasional use" is now 74,945. This is the highest since the Regional Plan Association started keeping track in 1991 and, as the group's director of community planning Moses Gates notes, more than enough to house the city's entire homeless population. A Department of Housing Preservation and Development spokesman says that the agency can't parse from the data how many of these 75,000 apartments are being rented out on sites like Airbnb versus how many are being used as pieds-à-terre, and indeed there may be some overlap. Still, it's clear that the gain of 69,000 newly built apartments since 2014 is dampened by the simultaneous removal from of nearly a third of that number of apartments the sales and traditional rental markets.

Gates argues that the numbers show the urgent need for the city to create a pied-à-terre tax, so that wealthy people have incentives to sell their apartments or rent them to full-time tenants rather than keeping them empty or occasionally renting them to tourists.

"You're taking housing off the market during a housing emergency," he says. "That should be good enough" for the city to take action. Pied-à-terre owners, he adds, are "not paying city income taxes, but you're using city services to protect your tax investment."

Mr. de Blasio goes to Albany

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York state lawmakers are pushing Mayor Bill de Blasio to move faster on a promise to take on a property-tax overhaul, saying many residents are already being financially hurt by changes to the federal tax code.

“It’s urgent that we move forward,” Assemblyman Michael Cusick, a Democrat, said during a finance hearing in Albany Monday where the mayor was presenting his preliminary budget.

The mayor’s budget appearances in Albany take place several times a year. It’s typical for state lawmakers to grill the New York City mayor on subjects ranging from taxes to schools to police.

At one point, State Sen. Catharine Young, a Republican, asked Mr. de Blasio why Shola Olatoye, the head of the city’s public housing authority, was still at the helm amid concerns over management issues, including revelations the agency had failed to conduct lead-paint inspections required by law for four years. Mr. de Blasio defended Ms. Olatoye, saying she had made progress in a difficult agency.

But many lawmakers in Monday’s hearing focused on property taxes, an issue that in New York has cut across partisan lines.

The mayor said he would “unquestionably” roll out property-tax changes this year. But he said any changes would have to be “revenue-neutral” to allow the city to maintain its current services.

The city’s property-tax rate hasn’t increased under Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat. But the levy has grown by 23%, or about $5 billion, since fiscal 2015, the first full year he was in office. The increase is because of a rise in property-value assessments by the city.

Cuts to property taxes haven’t been a priority for the liberal mayor and liberal City Council. But the city could change the way it assesses property values to reduce what many residents, lawmakers and experts have said are disparities in the way the levy affects homeowners in different areas.

Bill may change property tax system

From Crain's:

Something is afoot on one of the city’s diciest policy issues: property taxes.

Mayor Bill de Blasio promised Tuesday his office would soon move to reform property taxes—two days before his finance commissioner will appear at an event with a group suing to change them.

The mayor made the remarks at an unrelated afternoon press conference in Brooklyn, more than a year after he said he would assemble “a task force or whatever” to examine the city’s patchwork, piecemeal property tax system.

The group Tax Equity Now—an odd-couple coalition of civil rights groups and real estate powerhouses—have sued, alleging that owners of some dwellings get favorable treatment at the expense of minorities.

De Blasio reiterated his promise to tackle the “massive undertaking” in the near future, and noted that it would involve changes in both city and state laws. He declined to provide further details.

“We will have much more to say on the property tax issue in the next few weeks. It’s clearly a priority for the second term,” he said Tuesday. “We will, I believe, fundamentally, we will end up with a more straightforward, more transparent, more consistent property-tax system for homeowners and co-op owners and condo owners. But we have to ultimately be revenue-neutral in terms of its impact on the whole city. And those are the ground rules that I will proceed with.”

That means if taxes are reduced on some properties, they would be raised on others by the same amount. The prospect of a tax increase on owners of one- to three-family homes, which would trigger a political outcry, has kept city politicians from even attempting to reform the system for years.

Nicole calls for fair property taxes

From AM-NY:

Republican mayoral hopeful Nicole Malliotakis on Thursday outlined her plans to overhaul New York City’s property tax system, saying that if elected, she would establish a bipartisan panel to develop reforms.

Malliotakis, speaking at a news conference on the steps of City Hall, pointed to differences between her property tax bill and that of incumbent Democrat Bill de Blasio to illustrate what she described as “inequities” that result from the city’s current property tax code.

Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman who lives on Staten Island, paid $5,521 in city property taxes on her home that has a market value of at $549,000, according to 2017 property tax records. Meanwhile, de Blasio paid $3,581 in taxes for his primary residence in Brooklyn that is valued at $1.97 million, according to property records.

Under the city’s current tax code, the city caps how much a property’s assessment can increase from year to year to 6 percent. Activists who have been calling for a change to the code say the current law benefits property owners in booming communities such as de Blasio’s Park Slope neighborhood, because those property owners end up paying proportionally less in taxes than property owners in other outerborough neighborhoods that are experiencing slower growth.

“Four years ago, Bill de Blasio ran on a platform of closing the gap in the ‘Tale of Two Cities’ but he has done nothing to close it and seems perfectly fine with lower income middle class New Yorkers subsidizing the homes of millionaires, including his own,” Malliotakis said.

Residents protest taxes on co-ops and condos

From the Queens Tribune:

Residents of Bellerose’s Parkwood Estates condominium complex and members of the organization Politics Reborn turned out on Friday to protest city property taxes on condos and co-ops in front of Assemblyman David Weprin’s (D-Fresh Meadows) office.

The protesters accused the assemblyman and city of lagging on a bill aimed at capping co-op and condo assessments.

“He’s the one dragging his feet,” Alice Christy, a Parkwood Estates resident and member of Politics Reborn, said of Weprin.

Christy noted that Weprin is one of the sponsors of bill A00354A, which would cap co-op and condo assessments at 8 percent in any one year and 30 percent in any five years. The bill’s author is Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside). It is identical to a bill in the state Senate sponsored by state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Flushing).

“[The bill] just languishes there,” said Christy.

She added that 30 percent is still a big increase, “but it’s better than what we would have. Our community is middle-middle class. We can’t afford homes in the area, yet we have too much money for affordable housing. We need this to pass. The city commissioner of finance is just kicking this down the road. I’m not giving up. I’m a tiger.”

The condominium has a large senior population. Christy, who is a senior, said that with property taxes rising, her fees have risen as well. She added that the funds seniors receive from the city’s STAR program have not increased.

Christy and fellow organizers at Friday’s protest went door to door, persuading residents of the condominium to sign more than 250 letters urging Weprin to push the legislation.

Are property tax assessments done fairly?

From the Daily News:

This year Mayor de Blasio will pay $3,581 in property taxes on each of two row houses he owns in ultra-gentrified Park Slope. The city says his properties are worth about $1.6 million apiece.

Some 14 miles away, in middle-class Laurelton, Queens, Arthur Russell, 66, who retired from computer sales, will pay a property tax bill that, at $4,569, is about 28% higher than the mayor’s — even though the city says his single-family home is worth 75% less than de Blasio’s properties, at $396,000.

If Russell were taxed like the mayor, his bill would fall by roughly $3,500 a year.

“That money could be vacation money,” said Russell, who is African-American. “It’s a substantial amount. My frustration is that it’s blatant abuse. People, if you take a look at this thing, you see disparity.”

Across the five boroughs, the city Department of Finance is subjecting tens of thousands of homeowners to similarly unequal billing — with the winners located primarily in upscale neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and Greenwich Village and the losers located overwhelmingly in working- and middle-class neighborhoods like South Jamaica, East New York and Brownsville.

Often, the brunt falls most heavily on black or Hispanic property owners.

A coalition called Tax Equity Now NY, which includes the NAACP, the Black Institute, several landlords and homeowners, has teamed up with lawyers from the firm Latham & Watkins, including former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippmann, to file a class-action suit this week charging that the DNA of the city’s property tax system is racially biased and favors the affluent over the working- and middle-class.?

Property tax structure may be illegal

From Crains:

The mayor cannot possibly relate to the struggles of Bay Ridge homeowners. As a result of current assessment policy, his house is assessed at just 1.2% of its city-­estimated market value. However, in Bay Ridge, the median assessment is 4.3% percent. For homeowners in Queens (just under 5%), the Bronx (5.2%), and Staten Island (5.3%), it is even ­higher.

The mayor pays about $3,600 in annual property taxes for a house that the city estimates is worth $1.4 million.

In Bay Ridge, the median tax burden for homeowners is about $6,200, even though the city estimates that the median home in the neighborhood is worth only $785,000. If Bay Ridge homeowners paid the same effective tax rate as the mayor, their median tax burden would be less than $1,900. (The discrepancies can stem from a variety of factors, but it’s not clear which ones explain the mayor’s low rate.)

Although city officials argue that these inequities can be fixed only if Albany changes the law, the solution is simple and can be implemented immediately. The mayor should ensure that all assessments for homeowners in the city are uniform. That means lowering their ratio to that of the mayor’s house: 1.2%.

The decision is not only within the city’s control, it is legally required. The Real Property Tax law provides that all assessments must be uniform within each tax class—uniformity is the sine qua non of the property-tax system.

For a mayor whose political mantra includes a commitment to eradicating inequality, not addressing the blatant inequities in the property-tax system from which he benefits, and for which the solutions are solely within his control, is iniquitous. There are solutions. The mayor just needs the will to implement them.

Getting building classification correct gets city more money

From the Daily News:

The city risks losing out on $2 million in property tax money because of mistakes by the Finance Department in classifying buildings, an audit by city Controller Scott Stringer charges.

The audit found that 197 buildings in Brooklyn were wrongly classified as residential when most of their space was used for commercial purposes — so most of them should have been taxed at a higher rate.

If the buildings aren’t reclassified, the city will miss out on $2.09 million in potential tax earnings over five years, Stringer claims.

Next go after the 2-family homes rented as 3 or more units.

DeBlasio absolutely opposed to tax cap

From the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio said a property tax cap for New York City is a "non-starter" and state lawmakers' focus on it took away from pressing budget issues.

"Honestly, it's a non-starter," de Blasio said of imposing the 2% cap on tax levies, which other municipalities in the state are forced to abide by, on the city. "That cap would be very dangerous for New York City."

When de Blasio traveled to Albany this week to testify about the state budget, legislator after legislator pressed him about property taxes. De Blasio had hoped to push back against possible cuts to Medicaid and CUNY funding, in addition to talking about mayoral control of education and affordable housing.

"There were issues that probably didn't get the time they deserved," he said Thursday.

A measure to force the city to adopt the cap has passed the state Senate, but has virtually no chance in the Democrat-dominated Assembly.

DeBlasio grilled over lack of tax cap

From Crains:

Mayor Bill de Blasio traveled to Albany Tuesday to ask state legislators to fund housing and homelessness programs. Instead, he faced intense questioning about the city's tax policy and why the state's 2% annual property-tax cap does not apply in the five boroughs, The New York Times reported.

The mayor pushed back against repeated suggestions that the city adopt the cap, insisting that the Big Apple's situation was unique and that the city funds services that others in the state do not.

No one seems to care about property tax inequality

We're gettin' gouged

From Crains:

New York City has not changed its real estate tax rate in years, but soaring property values are sending the dollar volume of the money collected skyward. One has to wonder how long before a property tax revolt takes hold in the city.

The accompanying chart tracks the past 10 years of property tax collections and the de Blasio administration's projections for the next four years. All are for the city's fiscal year that ends June 30.

Doesn't it say something that the most liberal mayor and City Council in the past 35 years have little interest in this issue?

Bellerose house is quite an eyesore

From Brownstoner Queens:

On Friday, State Senator Tony Avella joined Jamaica Hills Bellerose residents to speak out against the abandoned home at 80-44 233rd Street. This home has a long and troubled history, dating back more than ten years. Senator Avella first called attention to the home in 2010, but since then its condition has only worsened. There are boarded up and broken windows, scattered refuse, and dead, overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the property. The current owner owes $27,049.63 in property tax debt, with the last property tax payment made in 2009. The Department of Buildings also has over fourteen complaints against the property dating back to 2002. A “partial vacate order” was issued in 2010.

Time to bend over again!

From the Daily News:

The city’s hot real estate market led to a whopping 9% hike on assessed property values, which will likely force some homeowners to fork over more in taxes.

The Finance Department released its preliminary tax assessments on Thursday, with most of the nearly double-digit growth the result of strong real estate sales.

Another 2% was attributed to new construction — which includes a Bronx boom.

The city uses the assessment numbers to gauge how much people will pay in taxes.

According to the city’s estimates, market values on class 1 properties — primarily one, two and three family homes — rose 7%.

Market values on condo and cooperatives went up by 11%, according to the department.