Jason Haber, co-founder of the American Real Estate Association (ARA), told New York City Council members Tuesday that the city’s rollout of its new pied-à-terre tax amounted to a dox of nearly a million property owners.
Haber, who also serves as president of the New York Real Estate Agent Continuum (NYRAC) and has worked as a licensed broker in the city for 20 years, made the comments during a City Council oversight hearing on the tax’s implementation. ARA and NYRAC held a press conference and rally on the steps of City Hall ahead of the hearing.
Haber co-founded ARA in 2024 with Mauricio Umansky, positioning it as an alternative to the National Association of Realtors after Haber’s 2023 push against NAR’s then-president. The group’s membership has grown quickly, with at least 30,000 members now.
Speaking at the rally ahead of the hearing, Haber said the city was treating property owners as “guilty until proven resident” and called on officials to apologize to the “959,710 New Yorkers” whose information was published.
How the tax works
The pied-à-terre tax, enacted as part of the state’s fiscal year 2026-27 budget, took effect July 1 and applies to one- to three-family homes valued at $5 million or more, along with condominium and cooperative units valued at $1 million or more, that don’t serve as the owner’s primary residence, Council Member Linda Lee, chair of the Finance Committee, said in her opening statement.
The rollout by the numbers
The Department of Finance published a supplemental property roll listing more than 900,000 properties — 959,710, according to ARA — that could potentially fall within the tax’s scope.
Of those, about 17,000 property owners received letters stating their properties may actually be subject to the surcharge, Department of Finance Commissioner Richard Lee said in written testimony submitted to the council.
Estimates of how many properties will ultimately owe the tax have varied: Council Member Gale Brewer, who chaired the hearing alongside Council Member Lee, cited a comptroller’s estimate of fewer than 14,000, while Haber and ARA’s press materials put the figure at roughly 13,000.
Haber’s testimony
In his prepared testimony, Haber argued the city eliminated what he called “practical obscurity” — a legal principle holding that information too impractical to compile by hand is functionally private — by making the records searchable and downloadable.
He said pulling all 959,710 records manually would take one person working eight-hour days, five days a week, roughly 15 years. Haber asked whether the release was the result of “accident, incompetence, or hubris.”
Haber told council members he downloaded the list himself the weekend it became available and built an application to sort it, including integrating age data to create a targeted list. He said he ultimately chose not to release the tool, saying he was concerned it could be used with bad intent.
“If I could do it in two hours, and I’m not even a computer programmer, imagine what someone could do who wanted to do harm to New Yorkers,” he said, calling the rollout “botched.”
Haber also raised concerns about fraud, telling Council Member Moses that the published data could let scammers pose as city officials and demand payment from property owners, particularly targeting seniors, to avoid the surcharge.
Asked by Council Member Dinowitz what steps the city could take, Haber said he would take the list offline immediately and reverse the burden of proof, requiring the city to demonstrate a property is subject to the tax rather than requiring homeowners to prove otherwise.
The city’s defense
Commissioner Lee’s written testimony defended the rollout, saying state law required the city to publish the supplemental roll and that the roll itself does not determine which properties are subject to the tax.
He said the initial determination letters went only to owners whose primary residency could not be confirmed through existing records, and that nearly 42,000 property owners have since applied for exemptions.
Lee said the department has expanded outreach efforts, including sessions at senior centers and community meetings, and has partnered with elected officials and building managers to help homeowners navigate the appeals process. He stressed that an initial determination letter is not a tax bill and said he would have preferred to testify in person but that pending litigation precluded it, offering to appear after Aug. 31.
The city extended the appeals deadline from late August to Sept. 18 following litigation filed by a group of homeowners, according to Council Member Lee.
Officials absent, citing litigation
Department of Finance (DOF) officials did not appear in person, citing the pending litigation, and instead submitted written testimony that Council Member Brewer read into the record. DOF is a mayoral agency, and Commissioner Lee is a mayoral appointee.
Several council members across party lines criticized the absence, including Council Member Carr and Council Member Sanchez, who noted that the city’s law department has testified before the council on other active litigation in the past.
Administration criticized directly
Beyond criticism of the rollout’s execution, at least one council member went further. Council Member Paladino Watson told the hearing the tax rollout reflected a broader effort by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration targeting property ownership, characterizing it as intentional rather than a matter of poor execution.
The administration did not respond to this characterization; Commissioner Lee’s written testimony, submitted before the hearing, addressed only the rollout’s legal and procedural basis.
Other voices at the hearing
Mary Ann Rothman, executive director of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums (CNYC), said the law’s requirement that co-ops collect and remit the surcharge from individual shareholders could strain smaller buildings’ finances.
Anna Champagne, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said the tax’s implementation was hampered by insufficient public vetting and a compressed timeline, though the commission does not support the tax itself.
The appeals deadline for the 2026-27 tax year is Sept. 18. Litigation over the rollout remains pending, and the council said it plans to submit written follow-up questions to the DOF.
