20-04-2019, por Matthew Haag
How Luxury Developers Use a Loophole to Build Soaring Towers for the Ultrarich in N.Y.
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Foto (Detalhe): Karsten Moran / The New York Times
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(..) The building and nearby towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city’s labyrinthine zoning laws. Floors reserved for structural and mechanical equipment, no matter how much, do not count against a building’s maximum size under the laws, so developers explicitly use them to make buildings far higher than would otherwise be permitted.
The towers benefiting the most from the zoning quirk have all sprouted during the past half-decade: enormous glass and steel buildings with lavish condominiums that sell for millions of dollars. Many line the blocks around Central Park, some of the most expensive and coveted real estate in the city, and have become second homes for Chinese billionaires, European tycoons and out-of-state hedge fund investors.
(..) Many of these towers stay vacant most of the year, so their owners are not subject to local and state income taxes because they are not city residents. As a result, the state and city have already begun a separate crackdown on them.
State lawmakers proposed a pied-à-terre tax, an annual recurring tax on second homes valued at more than $5 million, but it was derailed under intense lobbying from real estate groups. (Continua)
2019-04-20
