Posted by Leonard Steinberg on November 13th, 2013

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio may be thanking the creators and buyers of luxury condominiums soon: Over the next 24 months, the City and State of New York stands to collect close to a half a billion dollars in taxes from the construction and delivery of roughly $10 billion dollars worth of luxury condominiums. If you don’t believe me, look at this:

• Mansion taxes, City and State Transfer taxes:                     $400 million
• Broker commissions City and State taxes:                             $60 million
• Sales taxes paid for furnishing these apartments:             $50 million

Now add in all the people employed to build, decorate, furnish, clean, service, do the legal work for and maintain these buildings, plus all the additional economic activity generated by the process before, during and after construction and the result is: AN ECONOMIC WINDFALL….that Mr. de Blasio will be a ble to take credit for.

Now add on the ANNUAL collection of MASSIVE real estate taxes all these new apartments generate: My estimation is that if the next 24 months produces about 3,000 units, each paying about $ 24k per year in real estate taxes, thats an additional $72 million EVERY year going forward, and I bet that figure is conservative. You could also add in significant tax dollars from the sales of apartments from those moving to buy in these new buildings….

The bottom line: the construction of luxury condominiums in New York is GREAT for EVERYBODY, especially those that benefit most from the taxes collected.