The non-primary residence surcharge on NYC condos and co-ops

It is a new annual New York City property tax surcharge on certain properties that are not used as the owner's primary residence, sometimes referred to as pieds-a-terre. Per nyc.gov/npsurcharge as of July 2026, it applies to condos and co-ops with a market value of $1 million or more. It is added to the property tax bill rather than sent as a separate bill.

nyc.gov/npsurcharge

In everyday language, yes. The official name on the Department of Finance notice is the non-primary residence property surcharge. A pied-a-terre is a second home kept in the city by somebody whose main home is elsewhere, and that is the situation the surcharge is aimed at. If your unit is actually somebody's primary residence, the exemption is the whole point of responding.

Yes. PAT is shorthand for pied-a-terre tax, which is itself the everyday name for the non-primary residence property surcharge. Law firms writing to their clients have used the PAT tax as a defined term since the notices went out. All three names describe one surcharge with one deadline and one response, and which name you use changes nothing about what had to be filed or by when.

Not necessarily. It means the Department of Finance does not currently have a qualifying primary resident on record for your property. DOF gives one example of how that happens to somebody who does live there: if your co-op or condo receives the co-op or condo abatement, but DOF did not have a sufficient tax filing on record, you may have received the letter. If any one of the five exemption criteria is true for your unit, the property is exempt once DOF has the documentation. The notice is a request for information as much as it is a charge.

It is a percentage of the market value the Department of Finance put on your property for the 2026-27 tax year, and the city publishes the rates. For condominium and cooperative units: 4% from $1,000,000, 5.25% from $3,000,000, and 6.5% from $5,000,000. For one-, two-, and three-family homes: 0.8% from $5,000,000, 1.05% from $15,000,000, and 1.3% from $25,000,000. Those bands are what the notice figures follow. The example printed on one notice, a market value of $5,268,000 against an annual surcharge of $42,144.00, is 0.8% of that value to the cent.

The property is exempt if it is the primary residence of any one of the following: the owner of the property; a tenant or subtenant; one or more individuals who collectively hold a majority interest in the LLC, corporation, or partnership that owns the property; an immediate family member of the owner or majority interest holder; or the sole beneficiary of a trust. Meeting any single criterion is enough.

Yes. Where an LLC, corporation, or partnership owns the property, the exemption turns on whether one or more individuals who collectively hold a majority interest in that entity use the unit as a primary residence? The response has to establish both the majority interest and the residence, which is why entity-owned units usually take more assembly than individually owned ones.

Yes. A tenant or subtenant who uses the unit as their primary residence qualifies the property for the exemption, under a bona fide lease negotiated at arm's length with a term of not less than one year; the final rule added a way to document a month-to-month arrangement. In practice the response is built around the lease plus the tenant's own residence documentation.

The deadline was October 13, 2026. The notices printed August 21, 2026 for homes and condos and August 24, 2026 for cooperative units; on August 1, 2026 the Department of Finance extended the exemption application deadline to September 18, 2026 for everyone who received a notice, it then moved to October 6, 2026, and the Department of Finance's page now says the deadline to apply for an exemption for tax year 2026-27 was October 13, 2026. A September 29, 2026 court ruling ordered the mailed notices cancelled, but the City appealed and says the ruling is on hold. Unless an exemption is granted, the surcharge first appears on the property tax bill due January 1, 2027. The Tax Commission's page lists Form TC107 as the other way to appeal DOF's determination, due March 1, 2027 for Class 2 and March 15, 2027 for Class 1, or 30 days after a DOF final determination if that is later, and DOF's page says the Tax Commission considers residency only if you are also challenging the property value.

On September 29, 2026, Justice Wayne M. Ozzi of the State Supreme Court in Richmond County ruled in O'Brien v. City of New York that the mailed notices were arbitrary and capricious and violated the recipients' due process rights, ordered every previously mailed notice cancelled, directed the Department of Finance to take the current supplemental roll off its website and eliminated the exemption process. The ruling did not strike down the surcharge itself. The City filed a notice of appeal the same day, and a city official told CNN and The Hill that the appeal invoked a stay, which puts the ruling on hold while the City continues implementing the surcharge. As of October 19, 2026, the Department of Finance's page says the deadline to apply for an exemption for tax year 2026-27 was October 13, 2026, and it still does not mention the ruling.

The ruling and the appeal

A challenge to the value can be filed with the NYC Tax Commission. There is an important catch: asking the Tax Commission to review the exemption requires challenging the property's value as well, and that request replaces the direct exemption application to the Department of Finance. Taking that route when a straightforward exemption filing would have worked can cost you the simpler path, so the choice should be made deliberately.

nyc.gov/taxcommission

Each notice carries a unique security code, which is what the Department of Finance response portal, www.nyc.gov/npsurcharge, keys the exemption information and supporting documents to. For tax year 2026-27, DOF's page now says the deadline to apply for an exemption was October 13, 2026. If DOF determines the property meets any of the criteria, the property is exempt. Lost the notice, and the code with it? DOF publishes a route: call 311 or use its surcharge contact form to request your security PIN.

nyc.gov/npsurcharge

No. MGNY Consulting is a private consulting firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Department of Finance. Property owners could respond to the notice themselves at nyc.gov/npsurcharge. We are an option, not a requirement.

nyc.gov/npsurcharge