NYC Mortgage Recording Tax: Rates, Who Pays, Exemptions

Updated 2026-08-19 8 sources

General information about how this works in New York City — not financial, tax, or legal advice, and not an offer of credit. lender.nyc is not a lender or a mortgage broker and is not licensed by NY DFS.

What the tax is and what it costs

New York City charges a mortgage recording tax every time a mortgage on real property inside the five boroughs is presented for recording. Per Form MT-15 (rev. 1/25), Table 4, published by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, the combined state-and-city rate is $2.05 per $100 of principal debt for mortgages securing less than $500,000, and $2.175 per $100 for mortgages of one-, two-, or three-family houses and individual residential condominium units securing $500,000 or more. Everything else at $500,000 or more — larger multifamily, commercial, mixed-use — is taxed at $2.80 per $100.

Those are the totals. The number a residential borrower sees on a closing statement is smaller, because one slice of the tax is not theirs.

The four components, and who owes each

The tax that people call “the mortgage recording tax” is really four separate taxes stacked in one line item. Form MT-15 breaks them out; NY Tax Law §253 imposes them.

The special additional tax is the one that moves. NY Tax Law §253(1-a) places it on the mortgagee where the mortgaged premises are improved by a structure containing not more than six residential dwelling units, each with its own cooking facilities. Subtract that 0.25% from the totals above and you get the familiar residential figures:

• 1.80% of the loan amount for loans under $500,000
• 1.925% of the loan amount for loans of $500,000 or more on a one-to-three-family house or residential condo unit

There is also a small carve-out most people never notice. Tax Law §253(2) excepts the first $10,000 of principal from the additional tax when the property is principally improved by a one- or two-family residence, which shaves $30 off the bill. TSB-M-96(2)R confirms the exclusion does not apply where the mortgage covers property improved by two or more such residences — and by its terms it does not reach condominium units.

Worked example at each tier

A $400,000 loan on a two-family house in Queens: the full statutory tax is 2.05% of $400,000, or $8,200, less the $30 exclusion. The lender’s special additional share is $1,000. The borrower’s line is roughly $7,170.

An $800,000 loan on a Brooklyn condo: the full tax is 2.175% of $800,000, or $17,400. The lender owes $2,000 of it. The borrower’s line is $15,400.

The $500,000 cliff

The higher rate applies to the entire mortgage amount, not just to the portion above $500,000. That makes $500,000 a genuine cliff rather than a bracket.

One hundred dollars of extra borrowing costs about $627 in additional borrower-side tax. Amounts are rounded to the nearest hundred dollars for the computation, per the MT-15 instructions. Whether a loan can or should be sized under the line is a question for a lender and an attorney, and it interacts with the down payment, the loan-to-value ratio, and pricing — but it is worth knowing the line exists before the loan amount is fixed.

Condo versus co-op versus house

This is the single largest structural difference in NYC closing costs, and it is not a discount so much as a difference in what is being pledged.

• One-to-three-family houses and condominium units are real property. The lender records a mortgage against the property in the public land records, and the recording is the taxable event.
• Co-op apartments are not real property. A purchaser owns shares in a cooperative corporation plus a proprietary lease. A lender secures that loan by taking a security interest in the shares and the lease, perfected by a UCC-1 financing statement rather than by recording a mortgage. Because no mortgage on real property is recorded, no mortgage recording tax is imposed.

The practical spread is large. On an identical $800,000 loan, the condo borrower’s recording tax line is roughly $15,400 and the co-op borrower’s is zero. That difference is one of several reasons co-op and condo prices per square foot are not directly comparable — the closing cost stack differs before anyone discusses maintenance, flip taxes, or board approval.

Note also that Instructions for Form TP-584-NYC (rev. 8/25) treat a residential cooperative apartment as eligible for the continuing lien deduction alongside houses and condo units for transfer tax purposes. Co-ops are excluded from the mortgage recording tax, not from the transfer tax regime generally.

How it stacks with the other closing taxes

At a purchase closing in NYC, the mortgage recording tax is only one of four tax lines, and they are owed by different parties on different bases.

Two points are easy to miss. First, the mansion tax and the supplemental tax stack on each other: per Instructions for Form TP-584-NYC (rev. 8/25), a $6,000,000 residential conveyance owes the 1% additional tax plus the 1.25% supplemental rate for the $5M-to-$10M band, for 2.25% combined — and both are computed on the entire consideration, producing the same cliff behavior as the recording tax. Second, the transfer taxes are computed on the price while the recording tax is computed on the loan, so a large down payment reduces one and not the other.

Per the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, the base transfer tax is the grantor’s liability but the grantee becomes liable if the grantor fails to pay or is exempt, and the mansion and supplemental taxes are the grantee’s with the grantor secondarily liable. In new development, contracts frequently shift the seller’s transfer taxes onto the purchaser — a contract term, not a tax rule, and one worth raising with counsel before signing.

Exemptions and edge cases

Several exemptions are well documented in primary sources, and several widely repeated ones are not.

• Natural-person lenders. TSB-M-96(2)R confirms the special additional tax does not apply where the mortgagee is a natural person and the premises contain six or fewer residential units. A “natural person” excludes corporations, partnerships, and trusts. Seller financing from an individual therefore shifts that 0.25% back to the borrower.
• Qualifying nonprofits. Where the mortgagee is a §501(a)-exempt nonprofit, the special additional tax is not collected from it — but per TSB-M-96(2)R the other party must still pay unless both parties qualify.
• New York State chartered credit unions. TSB-M-10(1)R provides an exemption from the special additional tax for mortgages of qualifying residential real property where the mortgagee is a state credit union organized under Article 11 of the Banking Law, effective January 1, 2010, claimed by affidavit at recording.
• Supplemental instruments under §255. NY Tax Law §255 allows a supplemental instrument to be recorded without tax where the prior mortgage was properly taxed and the supplement secures no new or further indebtedness. This is the statutory engine of the CEMA, discussed at CEMA loans explained.
• What we could not verify. A reduced NYC rate for SONYMA-financed loans is asserted by a number of secondary explainers, but we found no supporting text in Tax Law §253, §253-a, or the MT-15 rate tables, and we are not repeating the figure here. A borrower using a SONYMA product should ask the lender’s counsel to identify the specific statutory citation before budgeting for a reduction.

Note that a refinance with the same lender is not automatically exempt. What §255 protects is the already-taxed principal carried forward on a supplemental instrument; keeping the same lender may make the paperwork easier, but the exemption is about the debt, not the institution.

The filing path

For Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, the mortgage and the tax return are submitted through ACRIS, the Automated City Register Information System operated by the NYC Department of Finance’s Office of the City Register. Staten Island recordings go through the Richmond County Clerk. In practice the title company or the lender’s counsel prepares the return and the tax is collected at closing and remitted with the recording, so a borrower rarely files anything personally — but the recorded documents and the tax paid are public and searchable in ACRIS afterward, which is how a later CEMA confirms the prior tax was in fact paid.

Where a mortgage covers property in more than one taxing jurisdiction, Form MT-15 apportions the tax by relative assessed value, with Form MT-15.1 available to claim a refund if the tax was overpaid to a single county.

Questions worth asking before closing

This guide is informational and is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Rates and thresholds change; the figures above are drawn from the cited state and city sources as they stood in August 2026. Useful questions for an attorney or lender include:

• Which rate tier applies to my loan, and does the loan amount sit near the $500,000 line?
• Is my lender paying the special additional tax, or does an exemption shift it to me?
• Does the $10,000 additional-tax exclusion apply to my property type?
• If this is a refinance or a purchase from a seller with an existing mortgage, has anyone priced a CEMA against the fees it would add?
• Which transfer taxes does my contract allocate to which party, and does that differ from the statutory default?