By Dan Murphy
The waterfront Larchmont mansion pictured above, is located in one of Westchester’s most desired neighborhoods with views of the Long Island Sound, Located at 25 Park Avenue in Larchmont, the 1.6 acre home sold for $11.3 Million, which reports claim was the highest grossing residential sale in the Village of Larchmont, Town of Mamaroneck, Westchester County.
The 8,000+ square foot home has everything you would expect, designed by Frank Ashburton Moore in 1898. The last owners paid $10.4 Million in 2006, just before the great recession and financial crisis his in 2008. But like most real estate holdings in Westchester, if you can wait long enough you can make a tidy profit.
The home was sold by Lisa Collins from Juilia B. Fee-Sotheby’s Realty, and the listing was held by Mimi Magarelli of the same company. Magarelli said that the owners got their asking price and that the home was listed, sold and signed into contract within two weeks of being placed on the market. This points to a red hot Westchester real estate market, especially for high end properties.
What brought sticker shock to this reporters eyes was not the sale price, but the property taxes that the new owners didn’t think twice about in quickly snatching up the listing. At $178,000 per year for property taxes, which include Larchmont School taxes, Town of Mamaroneck taxes, and Westchester County taxes, the total is a number that most Westchester residents could not afford to pay by itelf, without considering the mortgage costs which are probably around $25,000.
One real estate agent from the sound shore told us last year that on average, every Westchester home that has a $1 Million sales price tag has about $30,000 per year in property taxes. So for a $3 Million home in Scarsdale, the property taxes are between $75,000-$90,000 per year.
Anyone with the finanical resources to do so are moving to the suburbs since COVID. Nothing is staying on the market very long. For every house, there are 10 people bidding on it.
COVID has also been very good for stock holders, and the people who could afford to buy these properties have done exceptionally well over the past 18 months, so they have the money to buy the home of their dreams. And if they have $11 Million to buy a house, or $6 Million to put down on an $11 Million house, they don’t even care that the property taxes are $178,000 per year.
The cost of real estate in Westchester and the property taxes paid by homeowners in Westchester is the highest in the country, and so the debate in Washington over making changes to the current $10,000 limit on deductions for State and Local Income Taxes, SALT, is important.
Two plans are working their way through Congress regarding SALT deductions. One piece of the Build Back Better bill would increase the cap from $10,000 to $80,000 for all American homeowners, giving most homeowners in Westchester the ability to deduct all of their property taxes from their federal taxes.
But another plan, sponsored by US Senator Bernie Sanders, who is also the senate budget chair, and New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, would entirely eliminate the SALT cap for anyone with incomes of less than $400,000, and then gradually restore SALT caps on higher income earners.
