Co-Op and Condo Tax Abatement: Eligibility, Savings, and Filing

The co-op and condo tax abatement is a New York City program that cuts property taxes by 17.5 to 28.1 percent for shareholders and unit owners who use their apartment as a primary residence. It exists because owners in multi-unit buildings have historically paid higher effective property tax rates than owners of detached houses. You don’t apply for it yourself; your building’s board or managing agent files on behalf of all eligible units, and the savings flow to you either as a credit on your condo tax bill or as lower monthly maintenance in a co-op.¹

Who Qualifies

The program is governed by New York Real Property Tax Law § 467-a, and eligibility runs on two tracks: the building has to qualify, and your specific unit has to qualify.

The Building

The property must be a Tax Class 2 building held in cooperative or condominium form. Buildings already receiving certain other tax benefits are shut out. Specifically, a property with an active J-51 exemption for renovations, or with 421-a, 421-b, 421-g, or 420-c benefits, cannot also collect the co-op/condo abatement. If one of those other benefits is scheduled to expire on June 30 of the tax year in question, the building can apply for the abatement to pick up where the other benefit leaves off.¹

The Unit

The apartment has to be your primary residence, meaning you live there for the majority of the year. Vacation apartments and pieds-à-terre are out. You can own up to three units in a single development and still qualify, as long as one of them is your primary residence. Own four or more units in the same building and you lose the abatement on all of them.²

Units owned through business entities such as LLCs are generally ineligible, and so are sponsors of co-op or condo conversions and their successors in interest.¹ There is one narrow exception for LLCs and limited partnerships: a member or partner who is a law enforcement officer facing a credible security threat can apply for a security waiver, which has its own December 1 deadline and must be renewed each year.³ Units held in trust can qualify only if the trust exists solely for the benefit of someone who would otherwise be eligible as an individual owner.⁴

How Much You Save

The abatement is a percentage reduction of the property tax bill, and the percentage is set by the average assessed value of the residential units in your building. Lower-value buildings get the bigger break:

Average assessed value of $50,000 or less: 28.1 percent
$50,001 to $55,000: 25.2 percent
$55,001 to $60,000: 22.5 percent
$60,001 and above: 17.5 percent

These rates have been in place since 2014 and remain current through 2026.² If your unit’s share of the building’s property taxes runs $10,000 and the building sits in the lowest bracket, that’s $2,810 off the bill.

The Department of Finance calculates the average assessed value by taking the building’s total assessed value, multiplying by the residential percentage (based on shares or common interest), and dividing by the number of residential units.¹ Owners don’t pick their bracket, and the number can shift year to year as the city reassesses.

The Prevailing Wage Requirement

Higher-value buildings face an extra hurdle. Under RPTL § 467-a, a building must certify that all building service employees are paid the prevailing wage for the abatement to apply. The requirement kicks in when a property has either 30 or more residential units with an average assessed value above $60,000, or fewer than 30 units with an average assessed value above $100,000.⁵

Building service employees include doormen, porters, handymen, elevator operators, security guards, and similar maintenance staff. Anyone regularly scheduled to work fewer than eight hours per week in the building is excluded from the count.⁴ A building that meets the threshold but employs no service workers at all still has to submit a notarized affidavit saying so.⁵

Boards that don’t want to deal with the prevailing wage certification can opt out of the abatement entirely by filing an opt-out form, in which case the abatement disappears effective July 1 following the filing deadline. This is the political flashpoint in some buildings: opting out costs every qualifying owner money, while paying prevailing wage can push up operating expenses.

How Your Building Files, and the Deadline That Matters

Individual owners do not file. In a cooperative, the managing agent or board of directors submits a master application covering all eligible shareholders. In a condominium, the board of managers files. The application is annual and goes through the NYC Department of Finance’s online portal.²

The statutory deadline is February 15 each year for benefits starting July 1 of the same year. When that date falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline shifts to the next business day. For the 2026–2027 tax year, the city extended the deadline to February 23, 2026.⁶

Miss it, and there is no retroactive fix. An application filed after February 23, 2026, produces no benefit until July 1, 2027, and every qualifying unit in the building pays a full year of unabated taxes in the meantime. This is the single biggest risk for individual owners, because the filing is entirely in someone else’s hands and you may not know it was skipped until the bill arrives.

How the Savings Reach You

The abatement is a credit against the property tax bill, not a check. Condominiums are billed unit by unit, so the credit shows up on your own tax bill. Cooperatives are billed as a single entity, so the abatement reduces the building’s total tax liability, and shareholders see it as lower monthly maintenance.¹

The abatement applies only to qualifying units. If half the apartments in a co-op are investor-owned rentals, the building’s tax reduction is proportional to the owner-occupied share. That proportional reduction still passes through to eligible shareholders’ maintenance, but the drop won’t match the headline percentage.

If You’re a Senior or Disabled Owner

Owners 65 or older may also qualify for the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption (SCHE), which stacks on top of the co-op/condo abatement. SCHE reduces the assessed value by 5 to 50 percent depending on household income. The full 50 percent break goes to owners with combined annual income of $50,000 or less; the minimum 5 percent applies to income between $57,500 and $58,399, and owners above $58,399 are ineligible. For couples or siblings who co-own, only one person has to meet the age requirement, and the SCHE application deadline is March 15 each year.⁷

The Disabled Homeowners’ Exemption (DHE) mirrors SCHE’s income brackets but replaces the age requirement with proof of disability. You cannot collect both SCHE and DHE at the same time; if you qualify for both, you’ll receive SCHE.⁷

What to Do as an Individual Owner

Because most of the mechanics run through the board, most of the risk does too. Confirm with your managing agent every winter that the renewal has been filed on time. If you recently bought your unit, check that the building’s records show your ownership and primary residency before the February deadline. If your building sits near the assessed-value thresholds that trigger the prevailing wage rule, pay attention when the board discusses opting out, because that vote directly affects your tax bill.

If the Department of Finance denies the building’s application, the NYC Tax Commission does not hear appeals of abatement denials.⁸ The practical remedy is to fix whatever caused the denial, often a missing prevailing wage affidavit, incomplete ownership data, or a unit that no longer qualifies as a primary residence, and refile in the next cycle. The LLC security waiver is the one piece of the program with a formal appeal path: a denial can be appealed to the Department of Finance within 15 business days of the notice being mailed.³

One last point on your federal return: because you can only deduct property taxes you actually paid, the abatement lowers what you can claim. For most itemizers, the federal state and local tax deduction is already capped at $10,000, so the abatement’s federal effect depends on whether your total SALT payments still clear that cap. If you’re well above it, the federal impact is zero. If you’re close to it, the abatement can free up room for other state and local taxes within the cap.

1
New York City Department of Finance. Cooperative and Condominium Property Tax Abatement
2
New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Exemption Administration Manual – RPTL Section 467-a
3
New York City Department of Finance. Cooperative/Condominium Abatement Security Waiver Application
4
New York State Senate. New York Code RPT 467-A – Partial Tax Abatement for Residential Real Property
5
New York City Department of Finance. Cooperative and Condominium Tax Abatement Frequently Asked Questions
6
NYC311. Co-Op and Condo Property Tax Abatement
7
New York City Department of Finance. Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption (SCHE)
8
NYC311. Property Value Appeal