The STAR property tax rebate is one of New York’s most popular tax breaks. It’s available to most homeowners and fairly easy to get, but my application for STAR was recently denied because the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance claimed that my income was more than $500,000. My boss thought that was pretty funny.
Getting that error fixed took months. I challenged the denial and was instructed to request a hearing, which I did. The state mailed me a letter saying my hearing could be nine months away, maybe longer.
Nine months? For a hearing about a problem that should take about a minute to fix? That seemed crazy, but I waited to see what would happen.
After about five months of radio silence, I got impatient and called the department. I will say this for Taxation and Finance: It’s one of the few government agencies where I have been able to get a human on the phone without waiting on hold forever. (Reaching a helpful person at the IRS, in my experience, is impossible, with one exception.)
A representative at the state’s tax agency picked up the call and I explained my situation. She said I needed to schedule a hearing. I said, “No, I have already done that. Why don’t you just look at my tax return and see that my income was below $500,000?” She agreed and looked up my tax return.
Moments later, she said she found the tax records for me and my wife Irene. I said, “My wife is not named Irene.” There was an awkward pause. Then she said, “I see the problem.”
The state had clearly mixed me up with someone who made more than $500,000.
“How could that happen?” I asked. “My Social Security number is unique to me!”
For privacy reasons, she couldn’t explain what had gone wrong. But she found my actual tax return, confirmed my true income and said she would inform the STAR division of the correct number. “It should be fixed in a few weeks,” she said. My rebate was approved the next day.
What we’re thinking about: Howard Slatkin argues that the city should focus code enforcement on buildings that have enough revenue for proper maintenance and are unresponsive to tenant complaints — and back off landlords who try to keep up their buildings but cannot afford to. “Violations, of course, do not create new revenues to cover the cost of repairs and upgrades,” the executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council wrote for Vital City, “and financial penalties can actually diminish the ability to pay for these improvements.” Send thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: The Trump administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development has been cracking down on people who benefit from its programs but don’t have a job. The policy shift is a threat to developments that rely on HUD subsidies. However, when New York-based Tredway bought a New Orleans portfolio of more than 1,600 affordable homes, it said it had “ensured that the properties will maintain their funding from HUD, which subsidizes the rent for more than 98 percent of residents.” How did it do that? The residents are all elderly or disabled and thus exempt from work requirements.
Elsewhere…
Longtime appraiser Jonathan Miller’s wife calls him “the king of free.” And who could blame her?
Miller is still sending residential market reports for the New York metro area even though he’s no longer being paid by Douglas Elliman to produce them.
His excuse: “My business, Miller Samuel, really benefits from this research in our appraisal reporting, and it sparks new ideas for my Housing Notes and keeps me up-to-date on the market I know best, while also maintaining my trend data from the mid-1980s.”
Upon leaving Douglas Elliman, Miller spoke with regional, local and international brokerage firms that reached out — as did an MLS and a couple of media outlets — about producing reports or market intelligence. He told me that upon reflection, “it became clear that I did not want to dedicate myself to creating a huge number of market reports, like I did for DE for 32 years.”
Besides his Substack pieces, Miller is working on a book and has a venture called StreetMatrix operating in California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. It is adding two states every month or so and he expects it to reach the Northeast in a year or two.
“In short, I’m still figuring things out, but I’m really enjoying the freedom,” Miller said.
Closing time
Residential: The largest residential sale Thursday was $14.5 million for a 3,813-square-foot condo at 100 Barrow Street in the West Village. The property last sold for $10.5 million in 2017.
Commercial: The largest commercial sale was $6.25 million for a 5,867-square-foot retail unit at 591 Third Avenue in Murray Hill. CB Developers sold the property to UK-based CORUM Asset Management.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $10.5 million for a 4,566-square-foot condominium unit at 23 East 22nd Street in Flatiron. Julie Pham and Angela Remigio of Compass have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 170,535-square-foot, 14-story, mixed-use project at 141 Van Siclen Avenue in East New York.
Guido Hartray with Marvel filed the permit on behalf of Rocklyn Asset Corp.
— Matthew Elo
