Mayor Zohran Mamdani is poised to cancel this year’s tax lien sale, which has been widely criticized as predatory and disproportionately impacting Black and Brown senior homeowners. His administration is planning on launching a six-month review to replace the city’s system. “What we are doing is pausing this sale for six months as we direct the Department of Finance to lead a review of the program with the intent of developing a more equitable approach to managing this kind of debt across different property types,” said Mamdani.
When a property is on the city’s tax lien sale list, it generally means the owner owes property taxes or has past-due water, sewer, and other property-related charges. The city can then sell the debt to private investor-backed trusts at a discount. They in turn make a collection for what’s owed, opening up homeowners to aggressive debt collectors and foreclosure. The list is usually posted every year in May.
A tax lien can be triggered by even seemingly low debts, which was the case for Brooklyn homeowner Filmore Brown in August 2025. His home was auctioned off without his knowledge over a past-due $5,000 water bill. Brown said he wasn’t informed about what was happening until the supposed new owners breached the house in the middle of the night, drilled out the locks, and installed surveillance cameras while his family and tenants were awakened from their sleep.
According to a NYU Furman Center report, the city started authorizing “in rem foreclosures” in 1976, taking over thousands of properties in the next few years until they placed a moratorium on the process in 1993. Under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the city came up with the current version of the tax lien sale system in 1996. This generated huge revenue for the city, more than $1.3 billion between 1997 and 2015. These were one to three units homes or multifamily buildings concentrated in Black and Brown neighborhoods like Central Harlem in Manhattan; Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and Starrett City in Brooklyn; Jamaica and Hollis in Queens; and several parts of the Bronx, said the report.
“I used to knock on the doors of Queens homeowners whose names were listed on the tax lien sale to try and get them off that list,” said Mamdani, recalling his days as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor with Chhaya CDC. “And I knew then what so many New Yorkers have also noticed, which is that this is a broken system that disproportionately targets Black homeowners, especially in central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens.”
City council made some strides in passing reforms for the tax lien sale and a city-established land bank last year in an attempt to make the system more equitable. The package of bills was vetoed by former Mayor Eric Adams before leaving office. However, the city council voted to override his vetoes and re-enact the bills in January 2026.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to end the tax lien sale as well as establish an Office of Deed Theft Prevention.
Deed theft is also a widespread problem, particularly affecting Black New Yorkers, where a homeowner’s deed is forged and their home is literally scammed out from under them. In one instance, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted three people for deed theft and mortgage fraud for allegedly stealing a Harlem brownstone from a family that had owned their house for nearly 40 years.
“I think what we can see is that in both of them [deed theft and the tax lien sale], they are disproportionately impacting Black homeowners. Especially again, Central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, are the neighborhoods where we see both of these issues really affecting homeowners’ ability to afford to stay in their homes,” said Mamdani.
“And what we also have seen is that deed thieves have used the publication of the tax lien sale list as a tool in targeting homeowners for deed theft,” he continued. “They approach somebody who they know is behind on their water bill or their property taxes. They promise them a refinancing to allow them to have more access to capital and instead, what they end up doing is stealing that title from that homeowner.”
Mamdani said that the Deed Theft Prevention office would coordinate all city enforcement mechanisms to stop deed theft in progress. This includes filing a motion to stay an eviction or foreclosure proceeding under the 2023 state laws, which allow a local government agency to investigate deed theft cases. The idea is to focus on places where deed theft has been rampant.
Meanwhile, the deadline for the state budget approval is April 1. But it is projected to be late due largely to negotiations over Mamdani’s proposed tax hike on the wealthy and climate law rollbacks, said state lawmakers. If that falls through, the city will be forced to raise property taxes in order to deal with the remaining gap in the city budget. Naturally, a lot of already financially stressed Black and Brown renters and homeowners are a little bit worried with the looming uncertainty.
“Raising property taxes is a path of last resort,” said Mamdani. “And that’s one that I have been working to prevent ever since we had to put forward our preliminary budget. And I’ve said then, and I will continue to say, and I’m working on how to ensure our budget reflects instead an ending of the drain that has long characterized the state’s relationship with the city. And also a plan that taxes the wealthiest New Yorkers and the most profitable corporations. Not a budget that is being balanced on the backs of middle class New Yorkers who are just struggling to make ends meet.”