A snapshot of the real estate problem

As the MTA has struggled to address is budgetary shortfalls, much has been made about the authority’s reliance on the real estate transfer tax. In a good market — say, 2007 — the tax brought in $1.6 billion for the MTA, and had the real estate bubble maintained its high, the MTA would not be facing tough decisions on service cuts. Today at The New York Observer, Eliot Brown wrote a short piece highlighting how the declining tax revenues hurt the MTA. Looking at the first quarter tax revenues in each of the last four years, Brown charts how real estate taxes collected from January through March declined from $412.2 million to just $96.4 million. When the market recovers, so too will the MTA to a point, but for now, there is no end in sight.