The Mamdani administration’s management of the second-home tax is causing anxiety and confusion among property-owning New Yorkers who are actually exempt, some city officials and attorneys told NY1.
City officials on Wednesday confirmed that about 17,000 letters were mailed to property owners to pay the tax or contest it by proving the home is a primary residence, rented out to a tenant, or has a value below the threshold for a tax.
“I think we’re always going to do everything that we can to make sure we’re communicating clearly to New Yorkers,” Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference Wednesday. “We’ve put the investment, we’re putting in the time now to ensure that come next year, this tax is only levied on those who are non-primary residences that are worth more than $5 million.”
Still, the onus is on homeowners to prove they’re off the hook for the second-home tax.
Finance Commissioner Richard Lee, who appeared alongside Mamdani, said there are reasons the letters are going to long-time New Yorkers; for instance, they’re owned through trusts and LLCs or records are outdated.
“There’s a number of reasons why we might have a lot of these edge cases, and we knew that it would,” he said. “But that’s why we have the committed resources to do so and help these individuals go through the process.”
Real estate attorney Benjamin Williams told NY1 he’s been inundated with requests since the letters went out.
“I wake up every day with ten more emails that people sent me between 6 and 7 a.m., asking me to take a look at their notice and help them with their verification of primary residence,” he said.
Only the approximately 17,000 owners who got a letter needed to pay or prove an exemption, but that had been unclear for days after the city published a spreadsheet last week of nearly 1 million properties that “may be subject to surcharge.” The spreadsheet included names, addresses, valuations of homes, condos and co-ops.
Gale Brewer, an Upper West Side council member, was in the spreadsheet.
“I don’t understand why you don’t start with a small list and then that list perhaps could be condensed,” she said. “But why put everybody on who obviously lives full-time in the city of New York?
She’s been sending confused constituents to the Finance Department.
“I think, in this case, it was poorly implemented,” she said.
Williams suggested the city could have offered more tailored information instead of a huge spreadsheet.
“They could have put some context when they said, ‘Here is a list of every apartment; just because you’re on this list doesn’t mean you’re going to get a notice,'” he said. “Also, would have been helpful if they published a second list that said, ‘Here are just the ones that are above the valuation threshold and, even better, would be here are the ones we sent the notices to.”