The surcharge applies only to homes that are not the owner's primary residence. Toggle between the Department of Finance's actual process and the process recommended in the accompanying essay.
Finance published essentially every property in New York City under the banner of the surcharge, then mailed about 17,000 letters saying the property "may be subject" to it — without ever showing how it got from one number to the other.
Step 1 · What Finance published
900,000+
Properties on the public roll
Essentially every property in the city — more than 950,000 records in all — released under the banner of a surcharge almost none of them owe.
The step Finance skipped
No published value list
Finance never published a narrower list of what actually crosses the value thresholds.
Step 2 · What Finance mailed
~17,000
Letters sent
Finance narrowed the roll to about 17,000 letters — but never showed how: no public value list, no explanation of the screen. Each letter says only that the property "may be subject," not why.
And the screen was incomplete — letters still went to thousands of owners Finance's own records already show are primary residents.
Start from what's actually over the threshold. Clear what Finance already knows, then what the State can confirm — and send letters only to the genuinely uncertain cases.
Step 1 · Publish the value list
24,218
Properties at or above the threshold
Houses valued at $5 million or more; condos and co-op apartments at $1 million or more. Value is public data and exposes nothing confidential — this is the list Finance could have published, and didn't.
Step 2 · Clear what Finance already knows
Remove the properties whose primary-residence status is already in Finance's own records — the senior, veteran and some STAR exemptions, and the co-op/condo abatement Finance recertifies every year.
Step 3 · Clear what the State can confirm
Ask the State to match its STAR credit file and the individually-owned homes, co-ops and condos against the New York State income-tax return — the address the owner already reports as home.
Step 4 · What actually needs a letter
~5,400
Genuinely uncertain cases
LLCs, trusts, rentals and homes the existing government records can't resolve — each told exactly why it got a letter and what to send.
Property counts are drawn from the Department of Finance supplemental rolls — TC1 for Class 1, TC2 for Class 2. The value thresholds are inclusive: the surcharge reaches property valued at or above $5 million for houses and $1 million for condo and co-op apartments.
The roughly 17,000 letters mailed is as reported. Finance has not published the screen it used to get from the full roll to those letters, or a list of the properties that cross the value thresholds.
The final stage — about 5,400 properties and roughly $450 million — is an estimate from a value-band liability model, not an agency count. It projects what plausibly still needs a letter after Finance's own exemptions and abatement, individually owned homes the State could confirm and the other proof pathways.
Band widths are illustrative, not drawn to scale. A true-to-scale funnel starting above 950,000 would render every later stage invisible.