The questions owners actually ask

It is a new annual New York City property tax surcharge on certain properties that are not used as the owner's primary residence, sometimes referred to as pieds-a-terre. Per nyc.gov/npsurcharge as of July 2026, it applies to condos and co-ops with a market value of $1 million or more. It is added to the property tax bill rather than sent as a separate bill. See nyc.gov/npsurcharge.

In everyday language, yes. The official name on the Department of Finance notice is the non-primary residence property surcharge. A pied-a-terre is a second home kept in the city by somebody whose main home is elsewhere, and that is the situation the surcharge is aimed at. If your unit is actually somebody's primary residence, the exemption is the whole point of responding.

Not necessarily. It means the Department of Finance does not currently have a qualifying primary resident on record for your property. If any one of the five exemption criteria is true for your unit, the property is exempt once DOF has the documentation. The notice is a request for information as much as it is a charge.

It is a percentage of the market value the Department of Finance put on your property for the 2026-27 tax year, and the city publishes the rates. For condominium and cooperative units: 4% from $1,000,000, 5.25% from $3,000,000, and 6.5% from $5,000,000. For one-, two-, and three-family homes: 0.8% from $5,000,000, 1.05% from $15,000,000, and 1.3% from $25,000,000. Those bands are what the notice figures follow. The example printed on one notice, a market value of $5,268,000 against an annual surcharge of $42,144.00, is 0.8% of that value to the cent.

The property is exempt if it is the primary residence of any one of the following: the owner of the property; a tenant or subtenant; one or more individuals who collectively hold a majority interest in the LLC, corporation, or partnership that owns the property; an immediate family member of the owner or majority interest holder; or the sole beneficiary of a trust. Meeting any single criterion is enough.

Yes. Where an LLC, corporation, or partnership owns the property, the exemption turns on whether one or more individuals who collectively hold a majority interest in that entity use the unit as a primary residence. The response has to establish both the majority interest and the residence, which is why entity-owned units usually take more assembly than individually owned ones.

Yes. A tenant or subtenant who uses the unit as their primary residence qualifies the property for the exemption, and there is no one-year-lease requirement attached to that path. In practice the response is built around the lease plus the tenant's own residence documentation.

Respond by August 21, 2026. That is the date on the notices now going out, and the date printed on yours is the one that governs, so check it. Unless an exemption is granted, the surcharge first appears on the property tax bill due January 1, 2027. If your date has already passed, do not assume nothing can be done. Call us and we will look at what corrective options remain for your property.

A challenge to the value can be filed with the NYC Tax Commission. There is an important catch: asking the Tax Commission to review the exemption requires challenging the property's value as well, and that request replaces the direct exemption application to the Department of Finance. Taking that route when a straightforward exemption filing would have worked can cost you the simpler path, so the choice should be made deliberately. See nyc.gov/taxcommission.

Each notice carries a unique security code. You use that code at the Department of Finance response portal, www.nyc.gov/npsurcharge, to submit your exemption information and upload supporting documents. If DOF determines the property meets any of the criteria, the property is exempt. See nyc.gov/npsurcharge.

No. MGNY Consulting is a private consulting firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Department of Finance. Property owners can respond to the notice themselves at nyc.gov/npsurcharge. We are an option, not a requirement. See nyc.gov/npsurcharge.