NYC's Pied-à-Terre Tax and the Threat to Real Estate

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. What is today is Suzanne Miller, the founder and president of the Empire State Properties in New York, a boutique wheal estate firm. Well deals with Europeans, deals with Americans, deals with everybody, and Suzanne Miller, there’s so much confusion. You’re the expert. You’re you’re the world’s expert on New York City. And give us your opinion of

0:26 what the heck is going on.

0:27 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. I love being on your show. I get all my news from WABC, and that’s the truth. There’s so much confusion about the Pietre tire thing. I want to try and explain it as simply as I can and then tell you my opinion. So first of all, it’s a five year phase in. It starts on twenty

0:42 twenty six, twenty thirty one. The interesting thing is if you own a town there’s two classes. It’s Class one, two and three family houses. That’s like a brownstone in a townhouse that gets taxed at from five million where it starts for a townhouse, to three family point eight percent, and from fifteen to twenty five million it’s one point

1:07 oh five percent. So if you look at those numbers of let’s say you have a fifteen million dollar townhouse. You’re gonna pay one hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars per year for that for your peer to tear.

1:20 Speaker 1 Tax, now above the real estate tax, so you have the real estate taxes and then to peer to tear taxes.

1:26 Speaker 2 But I want to see everybody’s confused because they don’t know if it’s the one million or the five million. So I thought I would take this opportunity to explain it. Then if you go to a condo, which is just somebody who’s got a secondary home in a regular apartment, that starts at one million dollars, so it’s a million

1:43 dollars for a single home, and it’s five million for a townhouse or three family. So if I own a four million dollar building, right, I got to pay point four. I don’t have to pay any tax until it’s hits five million. But if I own a one million dollar apartment, I have to pay four percent. So was that clear?

2:07 Speaker 1 Well, I mean that’s that’s a lot of money. I mean that’s double taxation without representation.

2:13 Speaker 2 So it’s on a condo, it’s four percent on one million, and on a townhouse it’s four percent on five million. So basically, I’m not gonna have to pay tax if I own a four million dollar townhouse, but I do have to pay four percent on a one million dollar conjo.

2:31 So that’s the first thing. It’s not done fairly. The way it was done was not done fairly. The other thing is the way they figured it. This tax went into effect on wherever you were living as of January sixth, twenty twenty six, but the law was enacted in May, So how do you go backwards? Those are two things

2:53 that stand out to me.

2:54 Speaker 1 The first Steputy may former further Steputy Mayor Randy Master is fighting it, and so far he’s ahead of the curve, and he was on our show a couple of days ago, and the fact is that he’s got a temporary stay.

3:09 I know President Trump is fighting it because he feels it’s unconstitutional and President and Dershowitz, the constitutional lawyer, has sent a memo to President Trump stating on how it’s unconstitutional and it’s also against states rights, where he has urged Dershowitz I think, or some other lawyers everged Florida to sue New York for because of the fact that

3:45 they’re punishing their Florida residents for owning real estate in New York.

3:50 Speaker 2 That’s that’s a great point. There are five hundred thousand condos in New York, and the real estate taxes in New York make up what is it, thirty five billion dollars, one third of the budget. So they want to pe allies you. They want to do bedchecks to see how many days you’ve been here. Right now, it’s great because

4:05 it only affects seventeen thousand people, even though almost a million people got the letter. But what happens when I can’t rent my apartment or the market changes a little bit and now I have to keep it empty, I’m going to be penalized. So I think the whole thing needs to be revamped. One of the other things that

4:19 stands out to me John.

4:20 Speaker 1 Is well, I mean, this double taxation is wrong, wrong, wrong, And well, you know, something has to change otherwise my personal belief New York City, New York State loses.

4:38 Speaker 2 We don’t want to lose. We want to keep it going. We want to do everything we can to fight five fight. It’s basically he’s the law was an act that I think to pander to his base, and that’s how this has started, and he’s doing a very good.

4:50 Speaker 1 Job on that.

4:50 Speaker 2 But I think a million people that got the letter, as Todd Shapiro calls it, Shinla’s list, they will maybe vote a little differently when they receive that letter.

5:00 Speaker 1 Susanne Miller, thank you so much for your input and we both fight fight, Fight, Thank you so much.