A stand-up comedian\u2019s satirical stab at Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new luxury home tax has snowballed into something she never expected to actually build.<\/p>\n
Madison Walser, who splits time between New York and Los Angeles, launched a website called Aura Investments<\/a> back in May as pure internet bait. The pitch was simple and absurd: struggling artists move into vacant apartments owned by wealthy second-home owners, and in exchange those owners dodge the city\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a>. <\/p>\n The site\u2019s copy leans into the joke hard. \u201cYou own a home in New York. You cannot always be there. Why should you be taxed for being successful?\u201d it reads, before offering itself up as \u201cyour solution to the vacancy tax.\u201d<\/p>\n Comedian Madison Walser created Aura Investments as a joke after Mayor Mamdani\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax proposal, building a site pitching artist house-sitting as a workaround for wealthy second-home owners looking to dodge the tax. Madison Walser\/Instagram<\/p>\n What started as a Threads joke turned into roughly 4,000 artist applications and about 25 homeowner submissions, eight or nine of which she considers legitimate. Aura Investments<\/p>\n Except a lot of people didn\u2019t get that it was a joke.<\/p>\n Since going live, Walser told Curbed in an interview <\/a>she has fielded outreach from people who say they actually own second homes in Manhattan and Brooklyn, on top of a flood of interest from artists hoping to snag free rent. <\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re close to 4,000 submissions,\u201d Walser told the outlet of artist applicants alone. On the property owner side, the haul was smaller but still real. \u201cFor properties, we had 25, and after I checked, we had eight or nine that were legitimate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The origin story traces back to a smaller joke that got out of hand. Walser had spent roughly a year bouncing between cities as a professional pet sitter before coding the site herself. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen the pied-\u00e0-terre tax thing came out, I made a joke on Threads that, because I have such a big heart, I\u2019m willing to sign a lease and live in the property of someone who\u2019s avoiding the tax so they don\u2019t have to pay it,\u201d she told Curbed. \u201cMy background is in software development, and I\u2019ve been playing around with AI coding tools, so I was like, \u2018Let me just code something real quick.\u2019\u201d A friend asked to repost it. \u201cI was like, \u2018Sure, why not?\u2019 And it just blew up.\u201d<\/p>\n Now Walser is doing the unglamorous work of trying to make the joke legally sound. She\u2019s hunting for a lawyer and hoping to bring on a co-founder to help sort out logistics. <\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest things are legal and safety,\u201d she said. \u201cBoth sides have to get a background check, and I have to make sure you\u2019re not some sketchball. We have to verify that you actually own the property. Then I have to get a leasing agent who makes sure the artists have tenants\u2019 rights. I\u2019m not just throwing these people in there on, like, a vacation. There would need to be a lease in place so the owners could not use the unit unless that was specified in their contract.\u201d<\/p>\n Two possible business models are on the table. In one, artists live rent-free while owners pay Aura a placement fee equal to 10% of what they\u2019d otherwise owe in taxes, funding both operations and a redistribution pool for other artists. In the other, artists cover utilities themselves in exchange for the space.<\/p>\n She\u2019s now exploring whether to build it into something real, with two possible models: either free housing for artists funded by a placement fee from owners (10% of their would-be tax bill), or artists covering just the utilities. catlabs\/Instagram<\/p>\n Walser frames the arrangement as a mutual win dressed up in ego stroking for the ultra-wealthy. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a back scratch for both sides. If you frame it to the wealthy as \u2018Hey, we\u2019re actually doing you a favor,\u2019 it stops making poor people look like they\u2019re less than,\u201d she said. \u201cOn the other hand, it actually puts people in units and frees up all the housing these artists live in.\u201d<\/p>\n