New York Post

Day care top tax scofflaw

- Lois@Betweenthe­bricks.com

NEW York property owners who are behind on their taxes have until May 12 to pay up or work out a deal with the city before its annual tax lien sale. Your bills are paid, right? Not so fast. Those who owe the city money range from princes to paupers and everyone in between — including a day care center that’s supposedly the biggest scofflaw of all, on the line for $14 million.

There are quirks in the city’s computer systems that can cause your property, condominiu­m or co-op building to make this list because the person in charge does not get the bill or thinks it does not apply to him or her.

Take water bills, for instance. Every year a major office building with an overdue water bill winds up on the list, usually after a sale. This year was no different, but we agreed to not out the Fifth Avenue building that recently discovered the issue and paid up even though the bill was for the prior owner.

Most apartment buildings have just one water meter. When one is converted to condos, the Department of Buildings creates a 7500 lot to host all of the property’s constructi­on permits, elevators, fire inspection­s and violations. If there are a few condo buildings within the tax block, it may appear as Block X, Lot 7501 or Lot 7502.

The NYC Department of Finance rarely has a 7500 lot in its own online register of deeds, known as ACRIS, so a search would not find it. A condo’s deeds would be found instead under its previous lot and then under the individual unit identifier­s.

Neverthele­ss, the Finance Department may have this 7500 lot in payment-due files because the Department of Environmen­tal Protection, which bills for water use, goes with the Buildings Department on this one and uses it as the host lot.

There are 635 properties on the 10-day Manhattan lien sale list, and while 134 have water as a component, 14 are for 7500 lots that may be tossed by the manager because, after all, that’s not on the list of blocks and lots for the building.

The Merchant House condominiu­m at 31 N. Moore St. owes $41,463 in water. The last six units sold for an average of $6.2 million, Streeteasy records show. Its management company declined comment.

There are other reasons properties end up on lien lists. In the Bronx, the financiall­y challenged Co-op City owed more than $587,400 going back to 2007 for a power plant. Housing and Urban Developmen­t is now insisting a proper manager take over from the board. After notifying HUD, it stirred up some action and now says the bill was paid late last week.

As for our prince: Sheikh Saoud Al-Thani spent $12 million in September 2011 for Apartment 9A and a storage unit with its own lot and taxes at 610 Park Ave. The acclaimed Mayfair was converted earlier by the Trump Organizati­on and filed a lien in February 2012 for more than $30,000 in common charges.

A sheikh entity did pay city property taxes of just over $50,000 for July 2012 and $39,418 for January 2013, and then stopped. The sheikh died in November 2014.

The new, non-Trump building manager declined to discuss any outstandin­g charges.

The unit now owes the city $345,405 for the apartment and another $2,112 for the storage unit. It is among the most valuable on the city’s tax lien list.

As for the day care center believed to owe the $14 million: When we wrote about this in March 2014, it owed $9 million and no water meter could be found. There’s now a water meter, but no one at DEP responded to questions about payments.

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