taxes

Um, welcome to reality. That's pretty much what we're all paying.

it just seems very high for a condo, in nassau you can pay that much for a house with great schools.

My property taxes in Nassau were around $9K a year for a 3-BR house in a corrupt town with mediocre schools (Long Beach). Municipalities are broke & the money's got to come from somewhere.

ali r.
[downtown broker}

If you are single, try a studio. Some are the size of small one bedrooms. And you'll cut your non-abated property tax bill to the $4000-5000 range. Or set your sights on older buildings with lower tax assessments. However, those savings may decline over time in the push for tax fairness reform. With budget deficits as far as the eye can see, NYC property taxes are bound to rise over time. So if taxes seem high to you now, you might as well plan ahead.

my taxes upstate have been about $12k a year (good school district), but i just read that my county is increasing them, and if i read the information correctly, mine will be going up by about $2000 a year. this will be happening all over the country.

yep front_porch, with unfunded pension liabilities at the muni level my guess is that most of the tax hike will come from property taxes higher income taxes. as a rule, it's the least mobile stuff what gets taxed the most.

"my taxes upstate have been about $12k a year (good school district), but i just read that my county is increasing them, and if i read the information correctly, mine will be going up by about $2000 a year. this will be happening all over the country."

auch! still wonder how people feel they own something that has so much annual fees that are so much out of their control. i'm afraid, if i ever own a house in USA, i would never feel like i really own it. does every developed country tax first residences like this?

admin, other developed countries have much higher personal income taxes at the national level, and VAT, and not much in the way of layers and layers of local, state, and real estate taxes. In the end I think it all works out to be about the same. But I'm okay with penalizing those who live in baronial-sized homes, which describes most US houses relative to the number of people living in them.

freezer, not sure, but I think older buildings generally have much lower RE taxes than newer ones. For NYC, that usually means established coops ... the condos are mostly very new. It's good that you're focused on what your full RE taxes will be, rather than only seeing the monthly costs during the abatement years.

"admin, other developed countries have much higher personal income taxes at the national level, and VAT, and not much in the way of layers and layers of local, state, and real estate taxes. In the end I think it all works out to be about the same."

i don't think it's true that it ends up being about the same. in USA you might pay the same, but you get much less. take into account the benefits you get as a young family for example. if you compare countries in northern europe they do provide great services in return for those income taxes. i'm thinking here about universal health care, childcare, good maternity and paternity leave, many weeks more of holidays than in usa and good public education.

i agree with you though about penalizing baronial-size homeowners. it's a win-win for the gov. you tell the citizens that they made it if they buy a big house. they follow through with a smile while milking them. not bad! everybody happy... till the taxman comes that is... :-)

Yes, we're on the same page: I meant the taxes amount to the same thing, not what you get in return. Of course, we get really great national defense in Iraq, Afghanistan, all of Latin America, large parts of Asia, the Middle East, etc. etc., so that's something to be happy about ... maybe even enough for a smiley emoticon, even. :)

hey alan, do mobile homes pay property taxes?

very funny, admin. The OP was looking in LIC. Is there anything wrong with suggesting a person downsize by 30% to save substantial money initially and every year thereafter?

lol PMG, i'm going out of my way to understand the mobile home decision.

freezer, if that tax level (in 15 years, when the tax abatement expires) is not adjusted by inflation, then it might become reasonable. remember Ben's helicopters.

the great advantage of the mobile home is that you don't lose mobility while owning the thing. sounds like the real deal if you can move just before the taxman comes. lol

no, live in your car. Then, the taxman won't ever bother you. And you'll pay less for gas.

i've seen RVs that look much more comfortable than some NYC's 1 bedrooms. anyway, too redneck of a conversation i guess for such a posh blog. :-)

one last thing though, anybody knows the story of property taxes on 1st residency in USA? when were they applied 1st? if this goes on, imagine the scenario in which even furniture and appliances will be taxed. right now it pays to have a smallish house with the best furniture, antiques and decorations (they are not annually taxed, you can pass them on to your heirs without any ordeal and tend to increase in value with inflation).

Its called personal property tax. Many locales already have it on motor vehicles and the like. Many southern vacation communities already have personal property taxes on furniture for non-residents that rent out their homes.

"have personal property taxes on furniture for non-residents that rent out their homes"

wow, 1st time i hear about them! thank you patient... kind of scary actually. how does the county know about what furniture out of state people have in their second home (lets say they rent it out during part of the year)? they pay a visit? or people come forward and declare it?

amazing patient, googling it made it somewhat less scary. i guess once it's been applied to biz and rentals, nothing can stop them from applying it to 1st residencies.

thanks for all the posts, but i heard somewhere (not from a broker) that since the new construction taxes are very high the city may adjust them to more reasonable levels. think about it-since they are not giving out abatements any more, a new condo next year will have to pay the real property taxes. it makes it seem like the monthly payment will be out of control-as if they aren't already. thanks again

We should be clawing back teacher's pensions and pensions for any civil servant, policeman, etc. who worked for less than 30 years and remove any pension associated with overtime.

freezer, where do you see a new condo next year? The point is new condo development has effectively been halted while developers try to unload the inventory they already have. When the time comes that the market can bear new construction condos, developers will lobby to re-initiate the abatements. I guarantee you that. It happened in the 1990 downturn. It will happen again.

PMG, i think some stalled developments that had their foundations in by the deadline have been given extensions for completion. i don't know for how long, or the conditions, but i'm fairly certain i read that a while back.

freezer, at this point i doubt the city will voluntarily reduce anyone's taxes in the interest of being reasonable. they need every penny they can get, and more.

the extention was 2 years, but it can be extended.

"We should be clawing back teacher's pensions and pensions for any civil servant, policeman, etc. who worked for less than 30 years and remove any pension associated with overtime."

the only doable thing to do without changing new york state constitution is to keep creating different tiers of public employees in which newly entrants get less and less benefits (which will not be enough to close the budget gap imho). you have to amend the constitution to cut benefits to those already working. issue is, while RE prices were going up nobody complained about high property taxes, so taxpayers are kind of complaining too late imho (baby boomers had been retiring from public jobs already...).

freezer....abatement is not exemption...check out the escalations over time. the tax number changes sooner than you think. By the by....not such crazy taxes. You like your garbage picked up? How about the fire department...always nice to have that around. How would public educators survive? How would they eat? Can you imagine if they had to work to survive? There would be dead decaying public educators everywhere...you'd be glad you payed your taxes so the garbage people could pick them up.

falco, more than half of your taxes go to pay liabilities incurred by previous taxpayers but not paid yet (kicking the can is not limited to politicians unfortunately).

previous taxpayers got services from workers that got paid less in return for the promise that future taxpayers will pick up the bill for pensions and health care benefits that keep on growing. not 100% of your taxes translate to current services. imho getting services for less than what they cost by shifting that burden to the future should be illegal.

Some properties in NY have tax caps, a limit in how much the tax bill can go up. I know of places that have a limit of 5% a year and 20% every five years. I don't know if this limitation is written in stone or if it can be changed.

i am complaining because my friends are paying about $2500 a year for a 2 story private dwelling in queens, while i'm about to be paying $7000 a year for a 1 bedroom condo in queens. doesn't make sense that i pay much much more when all i have is a small apt. also, i will be paying the same as someone in nassau where at least they have decent schools.

property taxes have to do with the value, not the size, of real estate.

move your condo to North Dakota and you will only pay about $200 per year.

Freezer, single family homes have the lowest taxes relative to all other property types in NYC. You need to compare your taxes with similar types of property, like other new condos. The way to save money when buying a condo is to buy an older condo, like a prewar conversion. You don't benefit from an abatement, but some of those have very low tax assessments. Unfortunately, sometimes your first purchase is also your first lesson in how NYC property is taxed.

I don't know if there's a formalized formula that gives older properties lower taxes, but it seems like that's what winds up happening, and it would be logical to assume that older properties have much greater needs in terms of maintenance and capital replacement, so that it would sort of balance out against the lower taxes (at least in terms of logical expectation ... reality is another story).

freezer, you too have the option of buying a 2-story SFR in Queens and paying lower taxes. Decide what you want.

But I think you'll find that any town in Nassau with even half-decent schools have much higher taxes than you'd be paying for that condo ... like 50% more for even the most modest houses. NY suburbs have scary-high RE taxes.

"I don't know if there's a formalized formula that gives older properties lower taxes, but it seems like that's what winds up happening, and it would be logical to assume that older properties have much greater needs in terms of maintenance and capital replacement"

imho it has to do with the voting pattern of each different type of owners. it's not a surprise that townhouses with very low turnover pay no taxes at all for practical purposes. those owners vote all the time. condo buyers tend to be youngsters that don't vote, no surprise that they face more burden. the system as a whole is tricky, but if you plan to stay for the long term, plan to buy a type that politicians would not dare increase taxes (sth owned by a lot of local elderly for example).

as pension costs begin to comprise more and more of the local budget (already crossing that point at 50% in nyc) the relationship between high property taxes and quality of local schools will become less obvious, making parents more reluctant to put up with them imho.

alan, in nassau you don't pay city income taxes though, right?