FOR the first time, the city has released a list of 17,000 properties that owe back taxes and/or are delinquent on water bills by the addresses as well as by borough, block and lot.
While the addresses are not always the primary mailing address of the building, a scan of the list may trigger property owners – including condominium owners – to take a harder look at their records.
What you see also may not be correct.
A quick look found about $1.1 million due from 140 Broadway – a 1.2 million-square-foot Class A downtown office building rented to top tenants and owned by World Trade Center lessee Larry A. Silverstein.
“It has to be a mistake,” Silverstein said through a spokesperson.
Of course, Finance records also show the bills are being sent to the now-defunct Manufacturer’s Hanover bank.
Fair warning: This is the time to clear up the records or work out payment plans. May 12 is the last day to pay outstanding taxes before the city sells the liens – i.e., the right to collect the back taxes – to a third-party bulk buyer, who is entitled to add a 5 percent surcharge to the payments.
Don’t forget the money owed is also being ratcheted up daily by an annual 18 percent interest tab.
The list of properties on the so-called 60-day tax lien list can be found on the Department of Finance home page at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/, or go directly to the list at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/liensale2.html.
To search by address, go to http://webapps.nyc.gov:8084/CICS/fin1/find001I. To search by borough, block and lot try http://nycserv.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp.
And if none of those work call (718) 694-0424 for an ombudsman to help you sort through the maze.
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East Side access by Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal is causing some East Side tsouris.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs sites to let the railroad come up for air and bring out its garbage. To accomplish both, the MTA is trying to buy a series of four small but tony commercial properties at 44-52 E. 50th St.
The buildings, down the block from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Waldorf-Astoria and across from the Helmsley Palace, lie between the large office buildings at 300 Park Ave. and 447 Madison Ave.
It is there the MTA intends to construct a four-story above-ground chiller, substation and emergency generator facility topped with three exhaust louvers.
According to the plans obtained by The Post, three loading docks will serve an approximately three-story underground freight elevator and exhaust system.
Katrina Nath – who purchased 50 E. 50th St. just last year for about $3 million – is now ballistic, while her husband, Dr. Sanjeev Nath, who runs the multi-location Eye Institute and Laser Center of New York, is in realty shock. “He is seeing his life’s dream taken away,” she said.
Their building was halfway through a $3 million transformation into a new eye treatment center and research headquarters when the MTA’s letter arrived in the mail.
She has now taken the contractors off the job, leaving the building an empty shell while her attorney negotiates with the state agency.
Other properties on the MTA hit list house a liquor store, and the restaurants Giambelli and Cinquanta. The MTA said they are talking with all the building owners.
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Equity Office Properties Trust Chairman Sam Zell wears jeans to as many places as he can, including the black jeans he wore to the Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association luncheon at the University Club yesterday.
“If you are successful at what you do,” Zell said, “and you wear jeans, you are called eccentric. If you are not good at what you do, you are a schmuck.”
As for his real estate predictions, Zell told the audience they should get out of “pessimistic” New York and check out the rest of the country, where space is slowly being absorbed – starting in the Western cities like Seattle and San Francisco.