Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Co-ops socked by tax mistake


From WPIX:

The city's Finance Department made a major mistake in the property tax-rolls and mistakenly boosted property tax values. Now, Co-Op owners are holding a tax revolt in Queens.

The error had the city scrambling to answer angry homeowners who demanded answers. More than 200 co-ops were mistakenly assessed, said the city, by more than $300 million. But city officials blame in on a glitch the computer system that processes the assessments.

Buildings faced some serious increases.

Typically, to get market values a computer program searches nearby 'comparable' rental buildings. Instead, it searched nearby commercial properties where rent can be much higher than a rental building.

The Glen Oaks Village, a 2,094 unit building, saw it's market value go up 86 percent. Cryder Point in Whitestone got slapped with a 147 percent increase and Le Havre, 122 percent.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a comprehensive list anywhere of those properties affected?

Anonymous said...

Didn't Stavisky and Avella just recently voted against capping property tax increases to 2%?

Anonymous said...

First the mayor's new computerized payroll project gets looted for hundred$ of million$ and now a computer screws up property assessments.

Dontcha love it when a computer geek buys the the position of mayor then tries to rule your life through arbitrary decisions concerning traffic, smoking, salt, sugar, calories and fat?

Well,at least the snow melted on my street...last week.

Anonymous said...

yes, they did vote against the tax cap because it would not apply to nyc residents

Edward B (Woody) Ryder said...

1. If Martha Starke was still Commissioner of Finance this would not have probably happened;
2. Bob Friedrich as President of Glen Oaks Village Owners has taken to the ramparts to protest this egregious error that has had such a potentially cataclysmic impact on co-op share holders; those who are frequently the least able to afford private home ownership in the 5 boros and thus opted to buy into co-ops.

Anonymous said...

This was no mistake. I firmly believe that the Finance department purposely assessed these values much higher than normal by using comparables consisting of mixed use and commercial properties in order to raise revenue for the city. You'll find these outrageous comparables in the assessment report on the DOF website (if it's still there).

City maliciously is targeting co-ops because, unlike 1 - 3 family homes, there is no cap on raising the assessed value of those co-ops and condos which have more than ten units.

It'll be too late this year to save coops from paying this exorbitant amount but I imagine there'll be a cap of some sort in place next year.

Anonymous said...

This sort of thing have turned even coop owners, normally liberals, into anti- government tea party zealots! Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Anonymous said...

The Department of Finance patently violated state law when they used property values of commercial/mixed use properties to reassess the values of cooperatives and condominiums. I hope Friedrich et al move forward with a lawsuit against the city to have these assessments overturned.

georgetheatheist said...

What are the numbers here? Dollars and cents, please. Examples of maintenance fees? Prices of units? Old and new taxes?

Then, we can have an intelligent discussion.

Anonymous said...

Presidents from these coops have said that if these increased property assessments go through, each shareholder would have to pay an extra 150- 200 dollars a month in maintenance. That's crazy.

Department of Finance abandoned their normal method of measuring assessed values of coops by using different set of comparable rental properties. Normally, they would look at nearby rental properties that were similar in character, construction, lot, etc, to arrive at some number that they would use as an assessed value. This year, as opposed to last year, the assessors used a different set of comparable rental buildings -- mixed use/ commercial buildings with rents much higher than their residential counterparts. They did it this way so that they can get to increase the coops' assessed values; as a consequence, you get to levy a higher property tax on these units.

So, they took these numbers from mixed use/ commercial and use them to raise the assessment value of coops by 100 percent or so. If Glen Oaks cooperative was worth, say, $1,000,000 last year, the assessed value has been now doubled to 2,000,000 dollars. They take that 2 mil and multiplied it by a tax rate set up by the city council and mayor. Voila!-- you get the property tax for the coop.

Double the assessed value, you get double the property tax.