Can New York’s Next Mayor Fix the City’s Broken Property Tax System?
Mayoral candidate Shaun Donovan may have flubbed a question about housing prices, but his answer had a kernel of truth: Expensive homes in Brooklyn really are assessed for a fraction of their value.
In New York City’s regressive tax system, luxury condos are assessed for tax purposes at a fraction of their actual price.
Photographer: Mark Abramson/BloombergTwo candidates hoping to be New York City’s next mayor stepped in it this week by flubbing a question about the price of housing in Brooklyn in interviews with the New York Times editorial board. One of those candidates, Shaun Donovan, who guesstimated that the median sales price in Brooklyn is $100,000, is the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
He and former Citigroup exec Ray McGuire ought to know better. The era of modest home sales for New York’s largest borough are as distant as the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Other candidates at least got within the ballpark (the correct answer is $900,000), including Andrew Yang, and Kathryn Garcia, who won the Times’ endorsement and whose guess ($800,000) was the same amount by which Donovan’s answer was wrong.