The time is up for apartments that benefitted from 421a developer tax abatements, and condominium owners are running for the door.
Owners of Manhattan condos with those property-tax breaks are now trying to get rid of their pricey pads since those benefits will expire soon, a new survey found. In January 2016, 421a stalled out and, in April 2017, was replaced with a whole new program, Affordable New York.
StreetEasy took a look at five buildings whose 421a tax abatement will soon be ending. The listing platform found that a greater share of units is up for resale on the site compared to other condo buildings, Bloomberg reported. And the units that are selling are going for about what the sellers paid when acquiring the properties.
Across Manhattan, a median of 4.8 percent of units at Manhattan condo buildings with over 50 units were listed on StreetEasy in mid-May. That’s compared to 11.3 percent of units on the market at The Avery at 100 Riverside Boulevard, which was built in 2006 and whose tax breaks will expire this year.
“People aren’t willing to pay the same amount for something that’s going to cost them more on a monthly basis,” Grant Long, senior economist at StreetEasy, told Bloomberg. “Figuring out what the right price is, given the expiring abatements, is going to be a challenge over time.”
The expiration comes as Manhattan’s condo market is already facing a glut of luxury pads. And in July, new mansion and transfer taxes go into effect.
“The difference between a building with a tax abatement and a building without is probably an additional $400,000 on the purchase price,” Alon Chadad, broker and co-founder of Blu Real Estate, told Bloomberg. [Bloomberg] — Mary Diduch