A Staten Island judge has temporarily blocked the rollout of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax after homeowners sued, arguing the city wrongly flagged their primary residences.
The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 7, claims the city improperly identified their primary homes as subject to the surcharge.
The lawsuit said the mailed notices “do not constitute proper notice under Tax Law,” and the judge sided with the plaintiffs, who said the city unlawfully shifted the burden onto them to prove they should not be taxed.
It added that those who received the notices, despite living in their New York homes as their primary residences, now face “irreparable harm.”
It added that they are forced to navigate a “murky exemption” process without any certainty of outcome or the prospect of ever recovering those lost resources.
The plaintiff cited expert analysis from former New York City Department of Finance (DOF) commissioner Martha Stark, who said there are only approximately 24,000 properties in New York that meet the market value thresholds set in the State statute, and that the overwhelming majority of which are primary residences, not largely unused “second homes.”
The next hearing is set for Aug. 31.
The spokesman for the mayor’s office, Matt Rauschenbach, told The Epoch Times by email that the Law Department will appeal the ruling immediately, which will stay the order, and that the city will continue with the pied-a-terre’s implementation.
“We disagree with today’s ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City’s ability to implement it fairly and effectively,” he said.
Rauschenbach said that the surcharge “asks those who own second homes valued at $5 million or more to contribute their fair share to the city they benefit from.”
The mayor’s office, in a statement at the time, said this will levy an annual surcharge on “one to three family homes, condominiums and co-ops valued above $5 million when owners have a separate primary residence outside of New York City.”
Mamdani said that the measure is expected to generate $500 million per year for the largest U.S. city by targeting “ultrawealthy out-of-city residents and global elites who use New York City real estate as a vehicle for wealth storage rather than as homes.”
The mayor said he was targeting thousands of properties “owned by foreign oligarchs and the global ultrarich” and specifically named the properties of American hedge fund manager Ken Griffin and Russian-born businessman and naturalized U.S. citizen Alexander Varshavsky.
On July 23, the mayor and DOF commissioner Richard Lee began notifying property owners by mail that they may be subject to the “pied-à-terre” tax.
“If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs, because you’ve got mail,” Mamdani wrote in a July 23 post on X.
The city then published a searchable database with the names and addresses of the more than 900,000 properties that may be subject to the pied-à-terre surcharge and mailed about 17,000 letters warning owners about it.
In his recent ruling, Judge Ozzi ordered the city to remove this list. As of writing, the list is still accessible to the public.
Self-described democratic socialist Mamdani was elected in November 2025 to serve as the mayor of New York, the most populous city in the country.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called Mamdani a “communist.”
Arjun Singh and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.
