What if the resident died, or is in a hospital or care?

An apartment can be empty on the taxable status date for a reason that has nothing to do with anybody keeping a second home. 19 RCNY 62-06(b)(3) says so directly: an individual's primary residency is deemed to continue in two situations, which means the property can still qualify while nobody is physically there.

The two situations

• Death: residency is deemed to continue for the one year immediately following it.
• Care: residency is deemed to continue during a continuous hospitalization, or a temporary nursing home or rehabilitation stay.

Read the words in the second one closely, because they are doing work. Continuous, for the hospitalization. Temporary, for the nursing home or rehabilitation stay. A move that was not temporary is a different set of facts, and the honest answer there may be that this provision is not the one that applies.

It is still a two-part file

The rule asks for proof of the event and proof of the prior residency. Owners tend to send the first half and stop, which is the wrong half to stop on: the deeming provision only extends a residency that already existed, so the file still has to show that it existed.

1. Proof of the event itself: the death, or the hospitalization or the temporary nursing home or rehabilitation stay.
2. Proof that the property was that person's primary residence before it. That is the ordinary base set: the most recent federal or state income tax return showing the address, or two of driver's license, voter registration, utility or similar bills.
3. Dates that connect the two, so the deemed period actually covers the date the surcharge is judged on.

Whose documents are these?

The person whose residency is being deemed to continue may not be the owner, and after a death is frequently not. Where an estate, an executor, or a surviving family member now holds the property, the residency half of the file is still the deceased person's own paperwork: the income tax return, and the license, registration and bills? Who inherited the apartment is a separate question from who lived in it, and only the second one is being asked here? If the property is now the primary residence of an immediate family member instead, that is its own criterion and its own file, laid out on affidavits.

Nothing about this provision changes the deadline or the portal. It changes what the file has to contain. The rest of the sequence is on the checklist, the surcharge itself is explained end to end on the notice and what it means, and the same situation is answered in plain language at my parent died and the notice came anyway.