00:00New York City's transit network, the MTA, is planning to offer $785 million of debt
00:05backed by a levy on real estate sales. Bloomberg's Michelle Caskey has been reporting on the story
00:09and she joins us now. And it's not just any real estate sale, it's specific real estate,
00:13isn't it? Definitely. It's the high end. It's the luxury residential and non-residential
00:21portion of the real estate market in New York City. And this is a way for the MTA to raise
00:28new money to help improve its infrastructure. What defines high end real estate, luxury real
00:34estate here? Definitely. So these are sales of luxury residential units that are worth
00:41$2 million or more. So whenever there's a sale, there's a transaction, there's a tax on that,
00:46and then the MTA gets a portion of that tax revenue. So it can do things like improve
00:53train signals and help to modernize the system. Okay. All things that are needed. Is this the
01:00same thing or is this separate from the pied-a-terre tax that Zoram Amdani, the New York City mayor,
01:04is trying to put in place? It's separate, but there is a little bit of overlap there for people that
01:11live in and own these types of properties. So the bonds that are being sold today by the MTA,
01:17they're repaid with this real estate tax revenue that an owner would pay when there's an actual sale
01:25of the property. The pied-a-terre tax is a different levy that the mayor is imposing,
01:32and that is on secondary homes, high-end secondary homes. And that would be an apartment that's worth
01:39at least a million or a single-family home that's worth at least five million.
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