Property taxes in townhouse

Property taxes don't increase based on a sale transaction. Properties are assessed every year, and get a new market value. Taxes are a fixed % of the assessed value. The maximum assessed value is a fixed % of market value, but there is a cap on how much the assessed value can increase every year unless there is significant renovation.

Thank you. Is there a way to find out what the assessed value of the property is?

www.nyc.gov/dof

Thanks so much again - amazing what you can find on there. With regard to property taxes not increasing based on a sale transaction, is it possible to decrease property taxes if a sale transaction is significantly below the assessed market value?

You can try, but the assessed value (given 50k taxes) is almost certainly much lower than the maximum assessed value (even with an adjusted market value). So it's not going to help you to lower property taxes.

One thing you can try is to change the C of O to a C of O with lower tax rate WITHOUT doing significant work.

Amity95, as stated above, extremely unlikely that you would find a transaction for below assessed value (which has little to do with market value). One thing you can do is appeal the assessed value to try to reduce it, though I don't know how successful those attempts usually are.

Hmm - very interesting. My accountant said that in 2008 the city reassessed many properties including others on that block. It appears the assessed amount for the property we are interested in more than doubled. Not sure how that affected its taxes (still trying to figure out how to figure out what the historical taxes are on the dept of finance website!)

Market value can double, but that is not relevant to the taxes unless there is significant alteration.

I'll pull an example from the DOF website. Using this link http://nycprop.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp.

266 W73rd (no significant alteration done) - look at the annual final assessment roll.

2012: Market value - 1.962m, assessed value 286,709
2011: Market value - 1.308m, assessed value 265,473
2010: Market value - 872k, assessed value 260,091
2009: Market value - 1.130m, assessed value 246,402 Intrafamily transfer at 1.1m
2008: Market value - 4.910m, assessed value 238, 169
2007: Market value - 1.630m, assessed value 220,546

Tax Class 2B, Maximum assessed value is 45% of market value, which means that despite the huge swings up and down in market price over the last 6 assessments, the assessed value has gone up (no more than legal cap) because it is nowhere near the maximum assessed value. If I were the owner of this property, I would have taken advantage of the lowest market value (2010) and changed its C of O at that point to tax class 1 (maximum assessed value of 16%), if possible.

I didn't bother writing down the annual taxes because that is a fixed % of the assessed value.

I cannot speak to tax calculations,as others have in detail,but I can relate the following brief story.During an extensive renovation of an east side townhouse several years ago,the building was visited in the middle of the project by a N.Y.City tax agent,for the specific purpose of examining the plans and re-assessing the home's value. He was willing to tell me that it was Dept. of Finance policy to review Alt. 1 Permit Applications for this purpose,with follow-up visits to the home.So, unless you keep renovations minimal or somehow "under the radar", I would expect to be re-assessed and raised;to what degree I can't say.