New Yorkers are hitting the roof because of ballooning property-tax bills.
A near-record 52,123 city taxpayers are appealing their home assessments this year — close to a 4 percent jump from the 50,249 who questioned their bills last year, The Post has learned. Of that total, 8,249 received reductions.
The highest number of appeals the city Tax Commission has ever seen was 52,130 in 1998.
Tax officials attribute the jump to the frustrating combination of growing bills and plummeting profits in home sales.
“We’ve been getting 5 or 6 percent increases every year for the last four or five years. It’s a combination of two things: The market was bad in 2009 and 2010, and people started paying more attention to their tax liability,” said Glenn Newman, president of the commission.
Another reason is the difficulty in selling homes.
“We’ve had a lot of people who are filing saying, ‘I can’t sell my condo — my taxes should go down,’ ” Newman said.
Because the city values condos and co-ops as rentals, not single-family homes, annual assessments are often higher than what homeowners think they should be. Assessments directly determine how much homeowners pay in taxes.
Another complication is that the city staggers tax-bill increases over a period of years, so a levy can go up while a home value decreases.
The commission is currently reviewing the appeals.
Brooklyn homeowner Prince Fenton said he is appealing because his Bergen Beach home was assessed at $795,000 this year — up from $703,000 last year — while 17 similar houses in a two-block radius received far lower assessments, averaging $642,000.
“It’s just ridiculous. There’s no way my house is worth that much,” he said.
His tax bills have steadily climbed since he bought the house for $400,000 in 1998: He paid about $2,500 that year, and will owe nearly $8,000 this year.