Just How Many New York Homes Qualify for the "Mansion Tax"?

Suddenly the “mansion tax” is everywhere. In his State of the City address last week at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a so-called “mansion tax,” a 2.5 percent surcharge on home sales over $2 million, which, he says, will raise $330 million a year in revenue. He has proposed using the money to fund rent subsidies for low-income senior citizens.

Also last week, the developer Toll Brothers, a public company, began offering a unique amenity for buyers at three of its high-end Manhattan condo developments: it agreed to pay the transfer tax and the state “mansion tax,” an effective discount of about 2.5 percent in the suddenly soft luxury condo market. As one broker put it, “Toll Brothers is a public company, and they have realism. If it’s not selling, they’ll adjust.”

But just how many New York City homes sell for more than $2 million? To find out, the non-partisan, publicly funded Independent Budget Office reviewed sales data for the past three years.

They found that there were 156,324 residential sales in New York City from 2014 through 2016. Of those, 11,937, or about 8 percent, were for more than $2 million. Manhattan was home to 86 percent of the $2 million-plus sales, while Brooklyn accounted for 13 percent, and the remaining 1 percent was scattered among Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. The neighborhood with the highest number of “mansion tax”-worthy sales was Soho/Tribeca/Little Italy/Civic Center. The only neighborhood outside Manhattan that accounted for more than 100 $2 million sales was Dumbo and downtown in Brooklyn.

It may reassure you to learn that not everybody in New York City is swimming in money. Of the 2014-2016 sales, 73,267 – nearly half – were for the modest sum of $500,000 or less.