The management co. provides the change of ownership info to the city. The new owner must apply for the STAR credit directly with the city and it will take effect based on the schedule.

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Everything that JG says is correct. However, it's still iffy as to how the city will compute abatements for a partial year of primary residence. I recently read (in Habitat, I believe) that the city plans to snapshot primary residence as of January 1 and use that as the basis for the whole year. This will save them some headaches while creating migraines for everyone else.

For starters: since the city's fiscal year is 7/1 to 6/30, does the residence status as of 1/1/14 apply to the 2013-14 tax year or 2014-15? (The former, I would expect, but it's not clear.) More importantly, what about a primary resident who replaces a non-primary resident on January 2 and loses a full year of the abatement? Or a non-primary resident who takes over on January 3 and receives a full-year abatement that other non-primary residents don't get? Yes, you can certainly argue that buyers and sellers need to work this out at closing, but the city needs to be clearer on what it's actually doing.

Just a few more of the many questions on a bad compromise by our elected officials on a long-standing abatement that was itself intended as a short-term compromise ...

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New owner as of June 2013 might have to pay the extra money because it works as follows:

The 50% abatement adjustment is for fiscal year 2012/2013 and is based on ownership on January 5, 2012.
The current billing year (july 1013-June 2014) is based on ownership on January 5, 2013.

They are eligible for the abatement for fiscal 2014/2015, which is based on ownership as of January 5, 2014 and will appear on bills beginning on July 1, 2014.

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MNT, I believe you have it exactly right. Thanks for the concise summary and example. Of course I'm not the Dept. of Finance and have no special knowledge of their reasoning.

The explanation I was thinking about came from the Autumn 2013 newsletter of CNYC. Here's an excerpt - and again, I have no special way of knowing whether this is 100% correct:

"Note that property taxes bills [sic] for each fiscal year that begins on the 1st of July are based on a snapshot in time of ownership data on the previous January 5th. Thus the adjustments made retroactively for fiscal 2012/2013 addressed ownership of units and shares on January 5, 2012. Bills for fiscal 2013/2014 look at ownership [as] of January 5, 2013."

(Anybody know why the DOF chose Jan. 5 instead of Jan. 1? I had remembered that part incorrectly. Can the date change from year to year?)

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