How Close Are Offering Plan Tax Estimates to the Real Bill?

Updated Oct 27, 2026 · 6 min read

We matched the per-home tax estimate in Schedule A of each plan to the NYC Department of Finance's tax on the same apartments, for 390 buildings and 7,310 homes whose first full year fell between FY2023 and FY2026. Tax breaks are taken out of the comparison, so both numbers are the same thing: the tax with no abatement or exemption.

Comparing Like With Like

A tax bill isn't one number. Three things can sit between the city's full tax and what an owner actually pays:

• Exemptions such as 421-a or J-51 take part of the building's assessed value off the tax roll.
• Program abatements reduce the bill directly. Some 421-a benefits reach the bill this way.
• The condo/co-op abatement goes to owners who live in their apartment. It depends on the owner, not the building, and plan estimates leave it out.

So for each home we work out the full tax: the city's taxable assessed value times that year's tax rate, before any break. The rates are read off the bills themselves:

Read off the bills: for each class and year, the most common bill ÷ taxable assessed value across the homes compared here.

Then we sort buildings by whether a break was involved. The headline numbers above use only the 390 buildings whose plan names no 421-a or J-51 and whose bills came within a quarter of the full tax. In those buildings, owners' own abatements took about 2% off the full tax on average. That isn't enough to change the picture.

How Big the Misses Are

In dollars, the median building's estimate was $8,290 a year per home. Its full tax in the first year was $9,050. But the median hides how wide the misses are: 40% of buildings landed within 25%, 47 buildings (12%) came in at more than double, and 26 (7%) at less than half.

Sunrich Tower in Queens is a clear case. The plan projects the full tax with no abatement, from the tax consultant's estimate of the building's assessed value (plan, p. 59). It works out to about $3,540 a year per home. In FY2025, the city's full tax on the 24 homes we matched was $7,100 each, 100% more. Plans often warn about this. Golden Garden's says the actual assessed value "may be significantly greater resulting in higher taxes" (plan, p. 49).

Lower Estimates Miss by More

The lower a plan's tax estimate per square foot, the more likely it was to come in at double or more. The highest estimates were the only ones that came in under, on average.

Gap: DOF's full tax in the first full year against the offering plan's Schedule A estimate, the median across each building's homes. Buildings with no tax break, whose homes have a size in Schedule A.

By Borough and Tax Class

Buildings with no tax break. The Bronx and Staten Island have too few to show.

Buildings in Tax Class 2 (four or more apartments) came in at a median +10% (351 buildings). The small Class 1 buildings came in at −18% (39 buildings).

When the Bill Comes in Low

A bill well under the estimate isn't always a windfall. 11 of the 26 buildings that came in under half had a full tax below $3 a square foot a year. That's the sign of a building the city hadn't yet assessed as finished. Its bills can rise once the assessment catches up.

Buildings With a Tax Break

19 buildings had bills a quarter or more below the full tax because of an exemption or abatement. We keep them out of the headline because a plan can estimate with or without the break, and these plans did both:

• 31-53 Linden Place, Queens, priced its 421-a in. It estimated $1,000 a year per home, against a full tax of $6,390, and owners were billed $860.
• 168 Avenue P, Brooklyn, estimated close to the full tax: $7,900 per home, against $8,740. Then 421-a cut the bill to $280.

Another 15 buildings name 421-a or J-51 in their plan, but their first-year bills show no such break. Their full tax came in at a median +73% against the estimate. An estimate that assumes a break that never arrives is the biggest risk in this comparison. See how a condo tax estimate works for how these programs phase in and out.

The catch: before you rely on Schedule A's tax column, find out which number it is: the full tax, or the tax with a break. Then check whether the break was actually granted. The tax section and the tax consultant's letter in the plan say which.

How This Is Counted

• Estimates: the monthly real estate tax for each home in the plan's Schedule A, as first filed, times 12. Amendments that re-estimated taxes aren't applied. Plans whose tax column mixes figures with and without an abatement are left out.
• Matching: each Schedule A home is matched by unit name to its own tax lot on the city's Digital Tax Map. A name that matches more than one lot is left unmatched.
• The city's figures: the Department of Finance's Property Charges Balance (each lot's property tax charges, as last revised) and its Property Valuation and Assessment Data (taxable and exempt assessed value), both on NYC Open Data.
• First full year: the first July-to-June tax year that started after the building's first recorded sale and in which most of its matched homes were billed for the whole year. A building's gap is the median across its homes.
• Left out: the assessment data starts with FY2023, so 216 buildings whose first year came earlier have no breakdown. The open data is also missing many FY2023 bills, so 195 buildings that may show their second year rather than their first are left out. So are buildings billed more than four years after the plan's budget year and commercial-class lots. With them out, 424 buildings remain, 390 of them with no tax break.

Each building page with a match shows its own figures in a Property Taxes section, with the breaks broken out. Compare any building's estimate with similar ones on our property tax benchmarks.

Related: How a NYC Condo Property Tax Estimate Works · How the 421-a Tax Exemption Works for NYC Condo Buyers