Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed property tax hike will put the squeeze on small building owners — and could even be the “nail in the coffin” for the city’s rent-stabilized market, critics warned.
Small Property Owners of New York, a nonprofit advocacy group, expressed grave concern about Mamdani’s Tuesday warning that he’ll be “forced” to raise city property taxes a whopping 9.5% to balance the Big Apple budget.
“You’ve heard a lot about billionaires leaving New York City, but nobody talks about the fact that the administration is going to squeeze small property owners in neighborhoods of color out of the city altogether and out of the real estate market,” said SPONY member Jen Lee, a landlord who owns two rent-stabilized tenement buildings in Chinatown.
He argued that Mamdani’s proposed hike — framed as a “last resort” if Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature don’t boost taxes on millionaires — will make it impossible for small landlords to afford maintenance on old buildings, forcing them to sell to banks or developers.
“You tell me how I am supposed to provide safe, affordable housing for my community, which is overwhelmingly people of color,” Lee said.
Christopher Atheneos, whose family has owned about 100 apartment units in Bay Ridge for five decades, worried what would happen to his longtime tenants if he were to be forced to sell his properties to a major developer or corporation.
“When I can’t maintain the building in the manner in which I’m used to maintaining it in the manner in which my tenants expected it to be maintained, that’s painful for me,” Atheneos told The Post.
“You know if I sold my building like the person that’s coming in is not going to be running it the way I’m running it. They’re gonna be worrying about paying their mortgage first,” he said.
Mamdani’s plan includes some frightening prospects: a nearly 22% tax for residential homes and townhouses or buildings with just three or fewer units, more than 13.6% for larger apartment buildings and a nearly 12% tax for commercial properties like storefronts or office buildings.
If it passes, for instance, the owner of an Upper West Side condominium currently assessed at $120,000 would go from paying $14,926 to $16,345 in annual property tax.
Landlords’ concerns only grew on Wednesday, when Hizzoner announced six new appointees to the rent guidelines board, which sets rent rates for the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments. A cornerstone of Mamdani’s campaign was his promise to “freeze the rent” on those units.
“He now wields the sledge hammer to enact a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments. This will drive the final nail in the coffin of mom-and-pop, generational, immigrant small property owners, and along with it, the city’s affordable housing infrastructure,” said SPONY’s board president Ann Korchak.
Korchak has long been warning of the risks of Mamdani’s tenant-centered policies, arguing they will ultimately drive small landlords to bankruptcy and pave the way for socialized housing, a policy that the head of the Mayor’s Office of Tenant Protection, Cea Weaver, has notoriously championed.
Weaver, who was appointed to the new post in January, previously called to abolish private property. Now, her office is holding a series of “rental ripoff hearings” encouraging tenants to air grievances against their landlords — though public housing tenants of NYCHA are not able to attend.
A spokesperson for Mamdani did not respond to The Post’s request for comments.
