u/JAFNIZZY

President Trump this week called New York City's new pied-a-terre surcharge a dangerous experiment and said he is exploring whether the federal government can block it. City property records suggest he has a direct stake in the answer: the largest surcharge exposure in Trump Tower belongs to his own triplex.

I pulled every Trump Tower unit from the city's FY 2026-27 assessment roll, the file the surcharge runs on. (I chair a NYC brokerage; this is my own analysis of the public data.)

The building splits cleanly. Of 229 residential condo units on the roll, 180 fall under the $1 million market-value threshold and owe nothing under Phase 1 of the tax. The median unit carries a Department of Finance market value of $794,535. The surcharge reaches 49 units, about a fifth of the building.

At the top sits the unit the roll styles 66N: market value $6,019,167, assessed value $2,708,625. Those figures match, to the dollar, the values news outlets have attributed to the president's triplex. At the flat 6.5% rate that applies above $5 million, the surcharge on the unit comes to $391,246 for any year it is not someone's primary residence. Mr. Trump changed his primary residence to Palm Beach, Fla., in 2019. Whether he was among the roughly 17,000 owners who received notices from the Department of Finance has not been made public.

Two different taxes are in play here, and much of the coverage has blurred them. The regular property tax is computed on assessed value, which for condos is 45% of the DOF market value run through the standard Class 2 rate. On the triplex, that produces the roughly $323,000 annual bill the unit owes in any case, occupied or not. The pied-a-terre surcharge is separate. It ignores assessed value, applies to the full market value, and is owed only in non-primary years. A non-primary triplex would owe roughly $714,000 all told: the $323,000 it always owed, plus $391,246 in surcharge. Condo owners sizing up their own exposure should note the same distinction. The figure on an ordinary tax bill says nothing about the surcharge.

There is also the question of the $6 million itself. DOF derives condo values largely from income rather than sales, and the triplex would trade for far more than its roll value; estimates over the years have ranged from the tens of millions upward, a gap that figured in the state attorney general's civil case. Measured against what the unit would actually fetch, the surcharge Mr. Trump wants blocked is charged on a fraction of its value.

The legal picture moved quickly this week. A Staten Island judge halted the rollout on Monday; the city appealed within hours, which stayed the order, and the matter returns to court Aug. 31. The exemption filing deadline remains Sept. 18. Owners who received a notice on a genuine primary residence should file rather than wait on the litigation.

The remaining 48 over-threshold units in the building start at $1 million in value, with surcharges beginning around $40,000 a year. A unit at the building's median owes nothing. Within Trump Tower, the tax is confined to the most expensive fifth of the building.

All figures are from the public DOF roll. Happy to run any building in the comments.

Ran the DOF supplemental roll (the July 24 file, 959,710 records) by Manhattan neighborhood. Some of it is what you'd expect. Some of it isn't.

Where the condo exposure actually sits: 10019. Nine buildings in that one ZIP carry roughly $70m a year of maximum surcharge between them.

• 217 West 57th (Central Park Tower): $14.3m/yr, 144 of 179 units over the line
• 220 Central Park South: $12.3m, 89 of 117
• 157 West 57th: $8.9m
• 53 West 53rd: $8.8m
• 111 West 57th: $8.4m, and 56 of its 60 units are over
• 25 Columbus Circle: $7.1m
• 768 Fifth: $6.0m

For scale, every over-threshold townhouse in the West Village adds up to $58.5m. All 605 of them. Nine towers on one strip beat an entire neighborhood of townhouses.

Townhouses by ZIP, over the $5m line:

• 10014 West Village: 605 homes, median $9.2m, $58.5m combined
• 10021 Upper East Side: 291 homes, median $12.5m, $58.2m
• 10065 Lenox Hill: 301, median $8.7m, $41.2m
• 10011 Chelsea: 358, median $8.4m, $35.2m
• 10128 Carnegie Hill: 253, median $7.6m, $22.9m
• 10075: 140, median $10.5m, $21.6m

10021 is the one worth staring at. Half as many houses as the West Village, same total exposure, because the median house there is $12.5m against $9.2m downtown.

The part I didn't expect. The tax ranking does not match the wealth ranking. 740 Park has 31 of its 33 units over the threshold and tops out at $4.4m a year for the entire building. 15 Central Park West: $6.7m. Meanwhile 301 Park Avenue, which nobody puts on a trophy list, carries $11.7m, because it has 352 units and 206 of them clear the line.

The reason is that the surcharge runs on DOF market value, which for co-ops and a lot of condos is derived from rent rolls rather than sale prices. Top DOF value at 15 CPW is $4.3m. Apartments there have traded north of $80m. So the addresses with the deepest old money often show the smallest bills, and a big stack of $2m units beats a small stack of very expensive ones.

Oddities from the roll:

• 340 East 74th has exactly one unit on the roll. It's valued at $34.2m and owes $2.2m a year on its own.
• 781 Fifth: 31 units, all 31 over the threshold.
• 435 East 52nd: 76 of 78.
• 980 Fifth: 43 of 45.
• 607 Hudson: 9 units, all 9 over, $3.2m between them.

Citywide it's 24,173 units over the line across 2,236 buildings, $1.73bn maximum before anyone files an exemption. Actual collections land far lower, since primary residences and 12-month leases are exempt and the filing deadline just moved to September 18.

Chairman of a NYC brokerage, fwiw. All figures are from the public DOF roll. Happy to run any building in the comments.

Ran the DOF supplemental roll (the July 24 file, 959,710 records) by Manhattan neighborhood. Some of it is what you'd expect. Some of it isn't.

Where the condo exposure actually sits: 10019. Nine buildings in that one ZIP carry roughly $70m a year of maximum surcharge between them.

• 217 West 57th (Central Park Tower): $14.3m/yr, 144 of 179 units over the line
• 220 Central Park South: $12.3m, 89 of 117
• 157 West 57th: $8.9m
• 53 West 53rd: $8.8m
• 111 West 57th: $8.4m, and 56 of its 60 units are over
• 25 Columbus Circle: $7.1m
• 768 Fifth: $6.0m

For scale, every over-threshold townhouse in the West Village adds up to $58.5m. All 605 of them. Nine towers on one strip beat an entire neighborhood of townhouses.

Townhouses by ZIP, over the $5m line:

• 10014 West Village: 605 homes, median $9.2m, $58.5m combined
• 10021 Upper East Side: 291 homes, median $12.5m, $58.2m
• 10065 Lenox Hill: 301, median $8.7m, $41.2m
• 10011 Chelsea: 358, median $8.4m, $35.2m
• 10128 Carnegie Hill: 253, median $7.6m, $22.9m
• 10075: 140, median $10.5m, $21.6m

10021 is the one worth staring at. Half as many houses as the West Village, same total exposure, because the median house there is $12.5m against $9.2m downtown.

The part I didn't expect. The tax ranking does not match the wealth ranking. 740 Park has 31 of its 33 units over the threshold and tops out at $4.4m a year for the entire building. 15 Central Park West: $6.7m. Meanwhile 301 Park Avenue, which nobody puts on a trophy list, carries $11.7m, because it has 352 units and 206 of them clear the line.

The reason is that the surcharge runs on DOF market value, which for co-ops and a lot of condos is derived from rent rolls rather than sale prices. Top DOF value at 15 CPW is $4.3m. Apartments there have traded north of $80m. So the addresses with the deepest old money often show the smallest bills, and a big stack of $2m units beats a small stack of very expensive ones.

Oddities from the roll:

• 340 East 74th has exactly one unit on the roll. It's valued at $34.2m and owes $2.2m a year on its own.
• 781 Fifth: 31 units, all 31 over the threshold.
• 435 East 52nd: 76 of 78.
• 980 Fifth: 43 of 45.
• 607 Hudson: 9 units, all 9 over, $3.2m between them.

Citywide it's 24,173 units over the line across 2,236 buildings, $1.73bn maximum before anyone files an exemption. Actual collections land far lower, since primary residences and 12-month leases are exempt and the filing deadline just moved to September 18.

Chairman of a NYC brokerage, fwiw. All figures are from the public DOF roll. Happy to run any building in the comments.

DOF says every owner on the pied-a-terre list gets told by Aug 30. The exemption applications are due Aug 21 for houses and condos and Aug 24 for co-ops. You can see the problem: if your letter arrives on the 25th, the main filing window already closed. (There is a Tax Commission appeal route that runs to March 2027, so it's not fatal. But still.)

So, two asks for the group:

1. If you've received the notice, what does it actually say? Does it show the supplemental roll market value DOF assigned to your unit, or does it just tell you you're on the list and point you at a website? Nobody seems to have published what these look like yet.

2. If you're willing, I'd love a copy with your name, address, BBL and any barcodes fully blacked out. We're putting together a plain-English "you got the letter, now what" walkthrough for clients who keep asking, and annotating a real notice beats describing one. Post it here or DM me. Please redact before sending, not after. Nobody needs their address on the internet, and I don't want the unredacted version either.

Disclosure, as with my other posts here: I chair a NYC brokerage, the walkthrough will live on our site, and the letter would appear only in redacted form.

There is a lot of confusion about which number actually drives the new pied-a-terre surcharge, and the answer changes in July 2028 in a way that produces some genuinely counterintuitive math. Laying it out for people who like running the numbers.

The three values on every apartment:

1. Assessed value. The capped figure your regular tax bill is computed from (about 45% of DOF market value for Class 2, with caps). It plays no role in this surcharge, despite half of Reddit citing it.

2. DOF market value. What DOF computes internally, now published unit-by-unit on the July 24 supplemental roll. For condos and co-ops it is income-derived and usually sits well below what units actually trade for. This is the operative number for Phase 1: flat 4% / 5.25% / 6.5% on the entire value once you are at or over $1M.

3. True market value. What the unit would sell for. Irrelevant today, but the statute switches condo/co-op valuation to a sales-based methodology for Phase 2 (July 2028), alongside a threshold jump from $1M to $5M and much lower rates: 0.8% / 1.05% / 1.3%.

Here is the part almost nobody has noticed: every band's rate falls by exactly 5x from Phase 1 to Phase 2 (4 to 0.8, 5.25 to 1.05, 6.5 to 1.3). So even though the valuation basis jumps toward true market, the bill only rises if the sales-based value comes in at more than 5 times the current DOF value. Rule of thumb:

- True value under $5M: you drop out entirely in 2028, whatever you pay now.

- True value over $5M but less than roughly 5x your DOF value: your bill goes DOWN in Phase 2.

- Only units whose true value exceeds roughly 5x their DOF value pay more, and that is basically the trophy segment where DOF values are most deflated.

Worked examples:

A condo with a $1.2M DOF value that would sell for $2.5M: Phase 1 bill is 4% x $1.2M = $48k/yr. Phase 2: under the $5M threshold, so $0. This owner pays for exactly two years.

An $8M DOF value apartment worth $12M: Phase 1 is 6.5% x $8M = $520k. Phase 2 is 0.8% x $12M = $96k. An 80 percent cut.

A $15.5M DOF value penthouse realistically worth $100M+: Phase 1 is about $1M. Phase 2 is 1.3% x whatever the comp model says, so $1.3M and up. The very top is the one segment that pays more.

Caveats, because they matter: DOF has not published the sales-comp methodology, so every Phase 2 number is an estimate against an unknown model. Band boundaries also shift between phases ($3M/$5M now vs $15M/$25M later), so the 5x rule bends at the edges. And the whole surcharge sunsets June 30, 2031 unless Albany extends it. But structurally this tax gets narrower and, for most units that remain in it, cheaper in 2028. That cuts against both popular narratives: the one where it is forever and only grows, and the one where it soaks billionaires equally in every phase.

Two questions I am chewing on: is there any principled reason to run Phase 1 on income-derived values and Phase 2 on comps, other than the comp model not being ready in time? And does the 5x crossover create a real incentive to time sales into 2027 versus holding through 2028?

Disclosure: I chair a NYC brokerage and we have been modeling the DOF roll data since it dropped. Happy to run numbers on hypotheticals in the comments.

The attached link is the DOF supplemental roll released July 24 — the raw data behind everything below. Owners get official notice by Aug 30, so this is no longer hypothetical. Whatever your view on taxing second homes, the structure deserves its own discussion, because a few design choices seem genuinely unfair in both directions:

1. It's a flat rate on the entire value, not marginal. A condo valued at $999,999 owes nothing. At $1,000,000 it owes $40,000/yr — every year. Nearly 4,400 condo/co-op units sit in the $900k–$1M band, one reassessment away from a five-figure bill. No other broad NYC tax works like this.

2. Phase 1 isn't a billionaire tax. Until mid-2028 the condo/co-op threshold is $1M, which in Manhattan is a one-bedroom. Of ~960,000 records on the roll, about 24,000 are over threshold — median bill ~$54k. The $5M threshold everyone associates with this tax doesn't apply to condos/co-ops until Phase 2.

3. Co-ops are billed to the corporation, not the owner. Your board collects it from you. Neighbors who are primary residents are administratively entangled in a tax that isn't theirs.

4. It's based on DOF market value, not assessed value. Owners look at the assessed value on their tax bill, see a number way under $1M, and wrongly conclude they're safe. The exemption filing deadlines (Aug 21 for condos/houses, Aug 24 for co-ops) will pass a lot of people who never realized they were subject.

Genuine question for the sub: if the goal is taxing absentee luxury ownership, is there any defense of a cliff structure over marginal bands? Or of a $1M Phase-1 threshold?

Full disclosure: I'm chairman of a NYC brokerage. We spent the last month building a free calculator (piedaterretax nyc) directly on this roll data — as far as I know it's the only one that looks up your actual unit rather than making you guess your market value, which is the number everyone gets wrong. Not linking it per sub rules; happy to answer methodology questions in the comments.