The honest edges of the exemption

A unit between tenants

The criteria ask who used the property as a primary residence. A unit standing empty between tenants on the taxable status date has nobody to point at, and practitioners reading the adopted rule have flagged vacancy between tenants as exposed. If one tenancy ended before January 5, 2026 and the next began after it, that gap is the whole question.

Death, hospital, nursing and rehabilitation stays

Here the rule carries an explicit continuation. Under 19 RCNY 62-06(b)(3), an individual's primary residency is deemed to continue for one year immediately following death, or during a continuous hospitalization or a temporary nursing home or rehabilitation stay. It is not automatic. It has to be documented:

• Proof of the event: the death, the hospitalization, or the nursing or rehabilitation stay.
• Proof that the property was that individual's primary residence before it.

Statutory residents

A person who pays city-level income tax as a statutory resident can still be covered by the surcharge. That sits unreconciled: paying the city as a resident does not, by itself, answer the primary residence question this rule asks. Firm alerts have flagged the conflict and nobody has resolved it.

Estates past the one-year window

The hardship continuation runs one year. What happens after that, while an estate still holds the property and the beneficiaries have not moved in, is uncertain? There is no published answer, and this site is not going to invent one.

Two things that simply do not exist

• Proration on a mid-year sale. There is none.
• A filed constitutional challenge. Uniformity, Equal Protection, and Commerce Clause arguments are expected, and as of August 2, 2026 none is confirmed filed.