Unless Mayor Bloomberg and City Council realize there’s a problem and come to some agreement, City Hall won’t be giving any Sandy refugees a break on their January property tax bills.
Property taxes are based on the building’s condition on the “taxable status” date of Jan. 5.
If your home has disappeared and the Finance Dept. figures that out, you may get a tentative assessment on Jan. 15 that reflects just the land where it stood — and it would be up to you to file an application with the Tax Commission for a discussion about the remaining value of your sandy land.
But when you rebuild, one expert advised that homes and small buildings will get a new and higher assessments. Home assessments will be based on about 6 percent of their construction costs, while four-to-ten unit buildings will have a new assessment based on 15 percent.
“Their assessments have been low and capped for a long time, and now they will have a new starting point,” said the tax expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Efforts to reach Finance were unsuccessful and a request to the Mayor’s office was not returned.
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In Breezy Point, where 111 small homes and cottages burned while surrounded by flood waters, a co-op corporation owns the land and collects taxes within the maintenance charges.
According to Finance records, the co-op has a market value of $299,324,265 and an assessed value of $16,707,765 and has a yearly tax bill of $3.1 million.
Roughly $775,000 is due Jan. 2.
In the last two months, several properties have sold for amounts ranging from $320,000 to $640,000. Melissa Carrington, of Rockaway Properties, said one of her listings had to be taken off the market because the owner said it was now “unsellable.”
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Ofer Yardeni and Joel Seiden, of Stonehenge, have bought the apartment building at 103 E. 86th St., right off Park Avenue, for $76 million. The price equates to $1.575 million for each of the “huge” 48 apartments, or, as Yardeni said, $850 a square foot each of its 90,000 square feet.
The three-, four- and five-bedroom apartments have fireplaces, and the five current vacancies will be gut-renovated and rented for $90 to $100 per foot, Yardeni said.
“There are almost no luxury rental buildings left on the Upper East Side,” Yardeni noted, as most are being turned into condominiums.
According to broker Aaron Jungreis, of Rosewood Realty, it didn’t take much effort to sell the off-market deal. “Ofer is very reliable, and it was a one phone call deal,” he said.