I just found an interesting article from a few years ago, that is, at the peak of the housing market and just before the bubble burst.
Sky-High Property Taxes Give Renters the Shaft | The New York Observer
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But for many years now, rental landlords (and commercial-building owners) have been paying disproportionately more in property taxes; and they often pass these higher taxes on to tenants through higher rents. Therefore, renters—particularly market-rate renters—often pay more proportionally in property taxes than actual property owners, like those in condos and co-ops.
The effective property-tax rate—the tax on every $100 of market value—dropped 65 percent for owners of one- to three-bedroom homes from 1984 to 2006, according to a December study by the city’s Independent Budget Office. At the same time, up it went for rental landlords in elevator buildings, from 3.64 percent to 3.72—the
only such increase among the city’s larger commercial and rental properties.
In 1997, the city added a co-op and condo tax abatement. In that year, according to the budget office, the effective tax rate for rental apartment buildings was 1.8 times higher than for co-ops, Manhattan’s dominant form of for-sale housing. Now, rental buildings are taxed at an effective rate 5.5 times higher than that of co-ops.
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I had no idea that there was such a huge property tax disparity between rentals and co-ops. In a co-op, which is a prevalent form of housing in Manhattan, residents own shares in a corporation which owns their apartment building, and resident shareholders get the tax breaks other homeowners enjoy.
Should property taxes be 5 times higher on rental apartments than on co-op apartments?