New York's homestead exemption, by county

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The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

The amount and its three tiers

CPLR 5206¹ exempts a homestead from a money judgment up to a dollar amount that depends on the county, measured in value above liens and encumbrances. Three tiers run through the statute.

First tier: ten counties, Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam. Second tier: six named counties, Dutchess, Albany, Columbia, Orange, Saratoga and Ulster. Everything else falls in the third. CPLR 5206(a) lists them this way, and the gap between the top and the bottom is large.

Three figures are written into the statute, $150,000, $125,000 and $75,000, and they are base amounts, not the amounts in force. CPLR 5253² adjusts them every three years, and the current numbers come from the Department of Financial Services. Read against the statute's three tiers, the Department's table gives $204,825 for the first group, $170,700 for the second, and $102,400 for the third, effective April 1, 2024. Those are the floors to work from until they change.

What counts as a homestead is narrower than a reader might assume. Under CPLR 5206(a) it is property owned and occupied as a principal residence, meaning a lot of land with a dwelling, shares in a cooperative apartment corporation, a condominium unit, or a mobile home. And the exemption does not apply where the judgment was recovered wholly for the purchase price of the property. Money that bought the house does not get held off by the exemption the house carries.

Two more limits sit inside the same section. An exempt homestead is not exempt from taxation or from sale for unpaid taxes or assessments, so the exemption is no shield against the tax collector. Protection continues after the owner's death for the surviving spouse and children under CPLR 5206(b), until the youngest surviving child reaches majority and until the surviving spouse dies. And under CPLR 5206(c) it ends once the property stops being occupied as a residence by a person it protects, with one allowance: a suspension of up to one year caused by injury to or destruction of the dwelling does not break it.

Adjustment every three years

These amounts are not fixed. CPLR 5253 recomputes them on a schedule, which is why the date on a figure matters as much as the figure.

Beginning April 1, 2012 and at each three-year interval after, CPLR 5253(a) adjusts the homestead amounts in CPLR 5206. To compute the change, the Superintendent of Financial Services works from the consumer price index for all urban consumers in the New York region over the most recent three years ending December 31, rounding each amount to the nearest $25. CPLR 5253(b) sets that method out.

For the 2024 update the Department noted a wrinkle worth knowing. Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer publishes the exact region CPLR 5253(b) names, the Department said it used the New York-Newark-Jersey City region instead. A statute pointing at an index that is gone, and an agency naming the one it used in its place.

A new amount is not retroactive. Under the publication form CPLR 5253(c) prescribes, an adjusted figure is effective on April 1 of its year, does not apply to cases commenced before that date, and does not reach restraining notices served or executions effected before the adjustment. Each current amount is published together with the date of the next scheduled adjustment, which for the 2024 figures is April 1, 2027. So the numbers above have a shelf life, and it runs out that day.

What it means for a floor

An exemption is a floor, not a ceiling on the creditor. A home worth more than its county's amount is still exempt, but the surplus is reachable.

A homestead does not lose its exemption because the property is worth more than the county amount. Under CPLR 5206(d) the exemption is not void, but the lien of a judgment attaches to the surplus, meaning the equity above the floor. A protected slice stays protected and the rest does not.

Reaching that surplus is not a matter of levying on the house. CPLR 5206(e) allows a judgment creditor to commence a special proceeding against the debtor, in the county where the homestead is located, for a sale by a sheriff or receiver. A court may direct that the notice of petition be served on any other person, and if it orders a sale it marshals the proceeds so that each person's share of the money corresponds to that person's interest in the property.

A floor follows the money afterward. Under CPLR 5206(e) the sum paid to the debtor as the debtor's share of the sale, up to the county amount, stays exempt for one year after payment. If within that year the debtor buys a new exempt homestead, the exemption ends for whatever money was not spent on it. That exempt amount is meant to land under a new roof, not to sit as cash. For how this reads in another state, compare Florida's homestead, and for the wider picture see homestead protection state by state.

The question underneath all of this is which county a house sits in and what it is worth above its mortgages. A page hands over the floor and the tier. That subtraction, and whether any of it stands between a particular judgment and a particular house, is for counsel with a file open.