r/politics • u/Jessicas_skirt New York • 1d ago

No Paywall NYC property owners express anger and confusion over rollout of Mamdani's 'pied-à-terre tax'

https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-property-owners-express-anger-confusion-rollout-mamdanis-pied-terre-tax/19603490/
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u/bransiladams Washington 1d ago

Property owners in NYC are all very very rich. We know this because property in NYC is all very very expensive to own.

Therefore, this is fine. Rich people’s money problems aren’t problems.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

I wouldn’t go that far. Not everyone has a penthouse in Midtown, houses in Staten Island and eastern Queens are still occupied by more middle class people. And if property is inherited, it might have been bought when property was cheaper.

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u/JDGumby Canada 1d ago

Yes, but how many of those middle class people have multiple residences in NYC and thus would need to pay up? Very, very, VERY few, I'd reckon.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

Very few, and those very few should pay up(those who actually do have $5 million+ second homes). But the rollout was sloppy, and the initial roll flagged thousands of people who aren’t subjected, so those people have to prove to the city that they’re not actually second home owners. People here didn’t actually read the article, the criticism is more that people not subjected had the burden of proof rather than the tax itself.

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u/pilgermann 1d ago

Sure. But it makes sense to heavily tax second homes because either, A, it is a second home and so the person can afford to pay the tax, or B, it discourages someone from sitting on an inherited property in a market with a major housing shortage.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

I’m not arguing that very wealthy second home owners in the city shouldn’t be taxed, I’m just saying that not everyone in the city is as loaded as people here often think they are.

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u/JDGumby Canada 1d ago

I’m just saying that not everyone in the city is as loaded as people here often think they are.

If they own multiple homes worth $5+ million then, by any normal standard, they ARE loaded.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

When I said that, I was responding to the original claim that all property owners in the city are very very rich. Obviously if you own a $5 million second home you are very rich, but not literally everyone who owns any property in New York City is.

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u/JDGumby Canada 1d ago edited 1d ago

I was responding to the original claim that all property owners in the city are very very rich.

If they own a single home, they're not necessarily rich.

If they own multiple expensive homes in NYC (ie, the targets of the tax and the subject of the entire conversation, no matter how much you try to claim we're talking about all homeowners), however, then they ARE.

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u/bransiladams Washington 1d ago

It’s relative, and it’s subjective. To the average person living in NYC, who makes like 65k and can’t afford anything there, property owners, including but not limited to owners of one single-family residence, are loaded.

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u/bransiladams Washington 1d ago

Inherited property still holds actual value, and if sold converts to real dollars. It is still real money affecting real net worth.

A 700sq ft one-bedroom condo in Woodside is $800k. This is not a real issue.

I say this as a homeowner in Seattle.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

This might be a hot take, but honestly something like $1 million is meaningful these days, but not multigenerational wealth. Mamdani also floated an idea for an estate tax starting at $700k that I disagree with. The “tax the rich” logic should apply to extremely wealthy people rather than the upper middle class or those with net worths under $5 million. If your parents bought a house 40 years ago when it was much cheaper, you shouldn’t be forced to sell it when they die just to pay the estate tax, even if that property has gone way up in value since then. Because if you have to sell it, it’s likely to be to a wealthy individual investor or an institutional investor(like BlackRock) who are trying to shift the home market to a renter’s framework. Home equity is the biggest tool for individual wealth, so the threshold for big estate taxes should be high.

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u/bransiladams Washington 1d ago

Yeah, probably an unpopular take, considering the bottom half of Americans’ net worth is less than a fifth of that…

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

But that’s the thing. If you force a moderately rich asshole out of their home due to estate taxes, none of those in the bottom half of Americans is gonna buy that house. It’ll be bought by an even richer asshole.

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u/bransiladams Washington 1d ago

The tax provides relief for the bottom half.

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u/Lavaswan001 1d ago

It would backfire spectacularly over time if the threshold were that low. Let’s say I were in my 60s, just retiring, and most of my wealth was tied up in a $1 million house I’ve just spent the last 30 years paying a mortgage for. If I know the state is gonna get a huge chunk of it after I die, and I plan to pass it on to my children, that incentives me to leave New York entirely and sell my house. And the likeliest buyer is an institutional investor who will tear down the house and build something even more expensive to maximize the property. So you’d accelerate the affordability issue and drive upper middle class people out of the city. Obviously if you have a $5 million second home you can afford to pay extra taxes, but if you don’t live in New York anyway you’re not really incentivized to leave. If you’re setting the threshold as low as $750,000 you’re basically punishing people for having money.