Striking a blow to Mayor Mamdani’s rollout of his signature pied-à-terre tax, a New York City judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of owners of pricey second homes and ordered the city to restart the process.
Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi found that notices the city mailed to homeowners informing them that they may be subject to the surcharge were unlawful and had to be canceled and re-sent. He also ruled that a supplemental property tax roll posted online must be taken down.
“No crime is involved here, but homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalized needlessly,” Ozzi wrote in his 22-page decision, referring to the city’s controversial rollout of the tax on high-value second homes.
Mamdani spokesman Matt Rauschenbach called Ozzi’s ruling “wrong” and said the administration would immediately pursue a pause of the order in court to allow the city to continue implementing the tax. A key source of revenue for the city, the second-home surcharge is slated to raise $500 million to help close what had been a massive budget gap going into the current fiscal year.
“The pied-à-terre surcharge is about a basic principle of fairness: if you can afford a luxury second home in New York City, you can afford to pay your fair share for the schools, streets and parks that make this city work,” Rauschenbach said in a statement.
“Our Administration is fighting every day to deliver for working New Yorkers. The ultra-wealthy are fighting in court to avoid paying their fair share. They have filed lawsuit after lawsuit to protect their privilege, and we will not back down.”
Randy Mastro, representing homeowners in the lawsuit, said the city had botched the rollout and wasted taxpayers’ time.
“The fact is that this administration failed to follow state law when it burdened New York City homeowners with proving they live in their own homes or be on the hook for paying a new surcharge,” Mastro said.
The city and the state estimated the number of properties impacted would be around 10,000, but a larger net was cast in July when the city wrote to approximately 17,000 luxury property owners, saying they may be subject to the tax. The notices informed the homeowners they could file for an exemption if they believed they were NYC residents or otherwise not subject to the surcharge. The first round of taxes is not due for collection until Jan. 1, 2027.
The initial letters were based in part on information culled from homeowners’ 2024 personal tax returns. After those notices went out, the city obtained more recent tax forms from the state six months ahead of schedule and contacted hundreds of people to notify them that they were not, after all, subject to the pied-à-terre tax.
The homeowners’ suit expressed outrage over the letters, as well as an online public database published by the city detailing some 900,000 pricey properties potentially related to the surcharge.
“The administration must go back and do what it should have done from the start: use all the information at its disposal to make an individualized ‘initial determination’ about who truly owes this surcharge before demanding that they pay it,” Mastro said Tuesday.
The wife and father of Republican Staten Island Councilmember Frank Morano, Rachel O’Brien and Carmine Morano, were among the homeowners who sued the city last month over the rollout of the surcharge, which targets luxury second homes owned by non-New York City residents valued over $5 million, or co-ops and condos with a market value over $1 million.
Two new lawsuits filed against the state in Suffolk County on Tuesday — one of them also brought by Mastro — challenged the lawfulness of the tax itself. Full-time Florida residents Steve Wynn, the casino mogul and developer, and Wilbur Ross, Trump’s former commerce secretary, were behind the other suit, arguing the tax discriminated against out-of-state residents who already pay property taxes and use fewer public services.
“When Steve Wynn and Wilbur Ross try to cast themselves as sympathetic figures in a fight over paying their fair share on multimillion-dollar second homes, they’re making the case for the pied-à-terre tax as well as anyone could,” Jen Goodman, a spokesperson for Gov Hochul, said in a statement.
Though the Moranos and their co-plaintiff Simon Hedley in the lawsuit against NYC later learned they weren’t subject to the charge, Mastro — a frequent defender of well-heeled New Yorkers and Mamdani critic who served in top roles under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Eric Adams — had claimed they were put through “hell” when they were informed they might be over the summer.
City Law Department chief Steve Banks had last month argued to Ozzi that the suit should be tossed because the homeowners who brought it hadn’t been harmed and there was thus no relief to grant. Banks said Mastro and the homeowners had manufactured claims to fight a policy they didn’t like after receiving a non-final agency determination that ultimately did not impact them. He said the process was an iterative one and that no laws had been violated.
“This is a case about nobody with a live claim,” Banks said at last month’s hearing. “The case before your honor is not an actual case in controversy — it’s a policy dispute dressed up as a case in controversy.”
The homeowners’ suit against the city did not challenge the underlying statute, which was passed by the state legislature in May, but rather the manner in which the city had implemented it.
Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax, which Gov. Hochul signed into law, aims to use money from wealthy NYC property owners with primary residences elsewhere to help fund the mayor’s affordability agenda. Homeowners who permanently live in the city, or have an immediate family member living there, are among those who qualify for exemptions.
More than 2,000 people have challenged their status, with the city recently extending the deadline to submit proof of residency to Oct. 6.
In a video announcing the tax in April, Mamdani held up as an example the $238 million penthouse on Billionaires’ Row belonging to Chicago-based hedge funder Ken Griffin, which was the most expensive home ever purchased in the U.S. when he bought it in 2019.
“This pied-à-terre is specifically designed for the richest of the rich — those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don’t actually live here,” Mamdani said.
