Impact of Tax Lien Sales in NYC

January - May 2023 | New York

Project Team Members: Hilary Ho, Gertie Ma, Theresa Yang

My final project for the course “Advanced Spatial Analysis” at Columbia GSAPP’s Urban Planning program investigated the impact of NYC’s now-sunsetted tax lien sales program on the city’s residents and neighborhoods. The course focused on the use of multiple advanced spatial analysis methods to answer a key planning-related question.

The NYC tax lien sales program was a legal policy, started in 1996 and sunsetted in 2022, which allowed city government to lay claim to properties whose owners had defaulted on their municipal charges, such as property taxes and water bills. These buildings placed on the tax lien sale list were subsequently auctioned off in an annual sale to both private and public investors. During this process, investors can impose additional fees or interest on property owners, operating similarly to a loan to allow the property owner to pay off their outstanding charges. In many cases, however, many investors end up foreclosing on the tax lien and taking control of the property.

A key equity issue drives this study on the impact of tax lien sales in the city: while tax lien sales functioned as a way for the City to mitigate tax delinquency and generate revenue on property-related debt, the properties that end up on the tax lien sales list have disproportionately been concentrated in low-income communities of color and have disproportionately impacted BIPOC homeowners.