Record Number of New Yorkers Appeal Real Estate Tax

It’s official: New Yorkers are sick and tired of whacked-out real estate tax assessments, and they’re not going to take it any more.

A record 55,000 tax appeals have been filed this year, and it’s likely to take until November for the 20 hearing officers at the city Tax Commission to clear the dockets, Crain’s reports.

"It's a long, long season," says Myrna Hall, the commission's operations director. And it just keeps getting longer, as more and more New Yorkers – especially those living in co-ops and condos – rebel against the city’s arcane property tax assessment system, and the ever-rising tax bills it produces.

In the 1980s the city started assessing buildings – including co-ops and condos – based on how much rental income they could produce. That helps explain why the owner of a pricey Park Avenue co-op may end up paying little in taxes if it happens to be next to a rent-regulated apartment building. But the system means that those who live in less prosperous parts of town can end up paying more. For example, in 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio's Park Slope home, then worth more than $1.4 million, was assessed at a value that triggered a $2,894 tax bill, while a similarly valued home in Borough Park paid five times more. The mayor's bill was low in part because the value of Park Slope homes rose so explosively that assessments – limited to 6 percent for one-, two-, and three-family homes – could not keep up.

About 30,000 owners of co-op units, small condo buildings or houses filed appeals last year, about a third more than did so 10 years ago. "Commissioners are sensitized by their superiors to listen sympathetically," says a tax certiorari attorney. "If Mr. and Mrs. Jones come into court, give them a bone."