Posted by Leonard Steinberg on December 12th, 2013
Some are chattering with disdain at the recent announcement that Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will be moving into Gracie Mansion from his home in Park Slope: While the mansion is certainly beautiful, 12 years ago its possible that some would have thought Mike Bloomberg chose not to live there as the location when compared to his house closer to the Park would be a downgrade. With Bill de Blasio, many feel that moving from his home in Park Slope to the Upper East Side would be a huge upgrade……they are wrong.
It is truly impressive how the perception and reality of Park Slope (and Brooklyn in general) has changed significantly in the past dozen years and one could almost say that Park Slope and the area around Gracie Mansion (Yorkville) are of a similar quality. Both are equally pretty, while some may even argue that Park Slope is much prettier. Granted Gracie Mansion is much more significant than de Blasio’s in Park Slope, but then again he is the mayor and requires a certain amount of space as the leader of this City.
What will (or should) be an eye-opener to Bill de Blasio is how these two neighborhoods are almost on par with one another (although many would argue that Bill’s house in Park Slope is much more accessible to public transportation) yet how much more in real estate taxes people in Yorkville are paying when compared to Park Slope. A townhouse currently listed at 437 East 84th Street, about 3,000sf in size and of a somewhat similar quality to the de Blasio’s house in Park Slope, has an annual tax bill of $ 20,225.00. While this house is possibly worth triple of Bill’s in Park Slope, Bill’s tax bill is only around $ 2,600/year…..surely if his house is worth a third of the house in his new neighborhood it should be paying triple of the real estate taxes Bill de Blasio’s pays…..or $ 6,741?
This unfair, corrupt (and un-constitutional)distribution of the tax burden has to end in New York and I am relying on Mayor-elect de Blasio to be the one to end this horrific ‘tale-of-two-real-estate-tax-cities’ during his first (and second?) term.