The verification fees
Suffolk charges a Real Property Tax Service Agency verification fee of $200 for each tax lot, and it has done so since December 2015. A parcel made up of two tax lots pays it twice. Where the purchase is financed, the Clerk charges a separate mortgage verification fee of $200 for the mortgage document itself.
So an ordinary financed purchase of a single-lot property carries $400 in verification fees before any recording fee, page charge or transfer tax. These are county charges rather than state ones, and they are among the larger line items on a Suffolk closing statement.
The taxes are the state's
New York imposes a real estate transfer tax of two dollars for every $500 of consideration, or part of $500, on any conveyance where the consideration is more than $500, and the seller pays it. The additional tax generally called the mansion tax takes one percent of residential property conveyed for $1 million or more, and the buyer pays it. The Clerk collects both at recording.
Mortgage tax in Suffolk is calculated on 1.05 percent of the amount of the mortgage, falling to three quarters of one percent where the mortgage is under $10,000. A $30 exemption applies where the mortgage states that the premises is or will be improved by a one or two family dwelling only, which is a sentence worth confirming is present rather than assuming.
Transfer tax and mortgage tax are paid by cash or certified check made out to the Suffolk County Clerk.
Getting a deed accepted
Suffolk's requirements are particular, and a document that would record elsewhere in New York is returned here for failing them.
The Suffolk County Recording and Endorsement Form goes on legal size paper, eight and a half by fourteen inches, with boxes six and eight completed. The RP-5217 goes on legal size paper as well, and it is signed. The Tax Map Identification Number comes from the Town Assessor rather than from the county.
Documents are in black ink on white paper. The Clerk states that blue or any other color is unacceptable, that type runs no smaller than eight point, and that any portion of a document that cannot be read is cause for rejection. Tape and correction tape over written text are not accepted. Page sizes are eight and a half by eleven or eight and a half by fourteen, and forms are reproduced at their printed size rather than enlarged or reduced.
Every party needs a name and a street address. Post office boxes are not accepted. Signatures are acknowledged under Real Property Law sections 309, 309-a and 309-b, and the signature and the acknowledgment must match each other — an initial or an also-known-as used once is used throughout the document and everything filed with it.
How the taxes may be paid
Suffolk caps the instruments it will take for transfer and mortgage tax in a way that catches attorneys from other counties. Certified check, cash and money order are accepted without limit. A title company check requires prior approval from an underwriter. A Suffolk County attorney's check is accepted up to $1,000, and a New York attorney's escrow or IOLA check up to $5,000. Above those limits the tax is paid another way, and a closing planned on the assumption that an escrow check will cover it stops at the counter.
Where a nonresident individual, estate or trust is selling, Form IT-2663 is year specific: the form year at the top matches the year of the transaction. A signer acting under a power of attorney attaches a POA-1 to it.
The five East End towns
Riverhead, Southampton, East Hampton, Shelter Island and Southold sit inside Suffolk County and carry a transfer tax that exists nowhere else in New York, funding the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund and, in four of the five towns, a community housing fund. A sale in any of those towns needs the Peconic Bay form filed with the deed, signed by both parties and carrying Social Security or Federal identification numbers for all of them.
The rates, the allowances that reduce them and the exemption available to first-time buyers are set out on the East End page.
Transfer-on-death deeds
New York now recognizes a transfer-on-death deed, and the Suffolk County Clerk publishes a separate fee schedule for recording one. It is a recent enough addition that few practitioners have used it, and whether it suits a particular estate is a question for an estate plan rather than a closing.