Below is a link to a Lohud news story from David McKay Wilson regarding condominium conversions. This directly impacts residents of Hartsdale, and the property taxes that you pay. Mr. Wilson came to the Hartsdale Neighbors Association February meeting where he discussed this and some of the other stories he has been covering.
https://www.lohud.com/…/06/20/condo-tax-break-li…/715530002/
Why would single family homes want to convert to condominium status? After all, part of the benefits of single family home ownership is control over your property. The reason, is that condominiums are assessed differently then single family homes. A condominium in Greenburgh, that has a market value of say $950k, is assessed at around $500k. That means they pay much less in taxes then a single family home owner with a market value of $950k would pay.
The town board had the opportunity to take action, by adopting the “Homestead Provision” during the 2016 Reassessment to reduce the inequity between condo and single family home owner tax methodologies but declined to do so. Homestead is a complicated and nuanced decision, with many factors to consider. In declining to adopt Homestead, the town board cited the burden on commercial properties, as well as the increase in taxes paid by condominium owners as the justification. This was discussed at a work session on 2/23/2016.
In that work session, experts brought in noted that pre-reassessment, the % of overall taxes paid by commercial properties was 20.3% of total taxes. If Homestead was adopted, they would see that decrease to 19.3%. Without Homestead, it would also decrease, but by slightly less to 20.3%. In either case, an overall reduction. It is hard to see how a reduction in taxes would be overly burdensome. The % of taxes paid by some condominium owners would rise under Homestead. Instead without homestead, their proportionate share further decreased by about 10%. Again these are not our figures, but figures provided by the experts brought in by the town.
For those interested, we encourage you to watch the work session for yourselves and you can do so at the link below. The whole discussion is informative but Homestead starts getting discussed around 15 minutes in.
http://greenburghny.swagit.com/play/02232016-520/#0
For those even more curious, what properties are assessed at in Greenburgh is public record. You can see the latest tentative roll here: http://www.greenburghny.com/…/2018%20Tentative%20Assessment…
An informed Hartsdale is one of our most important goals. We hope you find these kind of posts informative. If you have questions about any of the above please send us a message and we would be happy to discuss with you further.