Posted by Leonard Steinberg on January 18, 2011
Co-op and condo owners are slated to pay much higher real estate taxes next year, under a preliminary assessment roll released on Friday by the Bloomberg administration. The city attributed the rises, due to take effect in July 2011, to higher market values placed on apartment buildings by tax assessors. Yet no-one is asking for their methodology, no-one is asking why co-op and condo taxes should rise by almost TRIPLE the mount of single family homes. CORRUPTION?
Did you know that New York property taxes have risen by 78% in the past 10 years? Of course, some have risen significantly less than this 78% and other significantly more……why? CORRUPTION?
Tax collections are expected to rise by 7.5% for co-op owners, and 9.6% for condo owners across the city, according to a summary report released by the Department of Finance, yet single-family homes would only pay 2.8% more. CORRUPTION? Is this because Mayor Bloomberg lives in a townhouse?
ALSO: No-one is questioning why some co-ops, condo’s and single family houses are taxed so extremely differently from one another, often in neighboring properties: When the assessors re-valued the entire city did they even look at or consider the disparity between properties? I doubt it. CORRUPTION?
Taxes on rental buildings will also increase significantly, the report said—by 9% for rent-regulated apartments and by 8.1% for unregulated apartments. Some of this tax increase is passed on to tenants.
This translates into an average tax increase of $384 for co-ops, $490 for condos, and $107 for single-family home owners. In Manhattan, the tax bill will go up an average of $594 to $9,351 for co-ops and by $970 to $11,348 for condos: How on earth is it possible to have this broad a range? CORRUPTION?
Finance Commissioner David M. Frankel denied that assessments were raised to increase tax collection, saying the department “performs a ministerial function valuing properties in accordance with state law and the best practices.” Oh, really! CORRUPTION?
The new assessments are not final. Taxpayers can ask the Department of Finance to make corrections, and can appeal their new assessments to the city Tax Commission. The deadline for appeals is March 15 for owners of one- to three-family homes, and March 1 for others. I strongly urge all property owners who are being unfairly assessed to rise up now and fight this corruption ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Owen Stone, a spokesman for the department, attributed about 30% of the increase in assessments on apartment buildings to improved earnings by the owners of rental buildings (in a market where rentals have dropped significantly over the past 24 months…..CORRUPTION?), and the rest due to technical factors, including a new, more accurate assessment methodology (PLEASE SHOW US THIS METHODOLOGY……PLEASE!), as well as lower interest rates on bonds, which are used in the calculation of market values.
Some of the increase in average tax assessments is due to new construction, renovation and expiring tax exemptions on individual properties.
Under state law, valuations of co-ops and condos are calculated as if they were similar rental buildings, though they are entitled to co-op and condo abatements, usually 17.5%.
Tax collections on office buildings were due to rise by 7.25%, according to the report. In total, city revenue was expected to rise by $900 million under the new assessments, Mr. Stone said. And what will we be using this $ 900 million for exactly? The MTA? The Sanitation workers bonuses? CORRUPTION?
Michael Slattery, senior vice president at the Real Estate Board of New York, said the steep increases were cause for concern and that he would be consulting with property owners.
“Some of the numbers look high, surprisingly so,” he said. “I can’t believe the market went up that much.” He says this after his OWN REPORT released just recently showed a slight improvement in pricing, but fails to mention that real estate taxes were never lowered when the property values declined.
The city also changed its assessment methodology for one- to three-family homes “to more accurately reflect sales prices,” resulting in some significant increases in market values of the most expensive homes in Manhattan. PLEASE SHOW US….WE SIMPLY DON’T BELIEVE YOU!
Market values of one-family homes in Manhattan went up by 16.3%, but because the assessment increases can only be phased in over many years, the assessed value for these homes rose far less, 7%. This translates into an average increase of $1,645 to an average tax bill of $33,132. PLEASE, PLEASE, someone, somewhere show us how one-family house values rose by 16,3% in the past year: WHAT PLANET ARE THESE IDIOTS LIVING ON?
In Queens, the city’s estimate of the market value of co-ops went up by 32.4%, with average tax bills to go up by 12.5%, or an average increase of $292.
So, dear taxpayers, if you believe everything our beloved City officials have spewed forth in this dumptruck of ‘facts’, go ahead and pay those taxes. If for some slight reason you question the legitimacy of these numbers, maybe now is the time to stand up to what I consider the MOST CORRUPT REAL ESTATE TAX SYSTEM IN THE WORLD.
Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 27th, 2013
Thank you for addressing the undertaxing of single family homes and townhouses and the overtaxing of condominium homes. It is completely unbalanced and unfair. The city needs to be held accountable.
The so-called “tenants rights” groups and their legislative kin need to held accountable for creating a system of rent control that reduce property tax income by more than $400 million. Spending is a factor, sure, but a good place to start is to have everyone pay their fair share.
Hey there! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I really enjoy reading your posts. Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same subjects? Thanks a lot!
The methodolgy of Coop and Condo assessment was enacted at ta time where most buildings where rental buildings in the city and there was no point of reference of individual sales to determine the value of a unit or building except the “value of an asset that would return a certain profit based on a capitalization rate”. If you look at the tax rolls, the rental estimates are ALL wrong as they compare building with rent stabilized rent wih Coops, Condo and who knows what. This is total Insanity. The value determined by the city has nothing to do with the real markeatable value of apartments and the methodolgy leaves so much to desire that it is virtually impossible to have a fair system. We have enough points of reference sales (Condo AND Coops) to be able to determine a fair market value of apartments. Also how do you explain a coop that sell for the same price than a Condo and the same price than a single home end up with such different tax bill. The law and consitution of NY state states clearly that every one has to be treated equally. Our corrupt government has found a way to treat people inequally and is doing nothing to change it. This is just outrageous and lame of lazy politicians.
Look at the related link portion at thr right of the commentary, included curbed, the real deal etc. All good real estate related information.
Has anybody realized that right after Bloomberg became mayor (2002), 2 years later (2004) he changed the name of the notice of assessments to notice of property value and removed the total property tax from the notice to make it more difficult to find your total real estate tax for that year. If you look at your assessments there is no more tax total on the notice