298 N.Y. 372 | NY | 1949
The property, whose assessed valuation is here in issue, is land in the Times Square district of the city of New York, improved with a nineteen-story hotel structure, erected in 1928, and operated as a commercial transient hotel. For the tax year under review, 1946-1947, the assessed valuation of the property was $2,500,000, of which $430,000 represented the land valuation. The court at Special Term found a value of $340,000 for the land and a total value of $1,765,000 for the land and building. These findings were identical in amount with the values fixed for the property by the Appellate Division for the tax year 1945-1946, reviewed in an earlier tax certiorari proceeding. (People exrel. Chase Nat. Bank v. Chambers,
At the trial, evidence was received of a sale of the subject hotel property and business in August, 1945, to the present relator, for $3,000,000, and of a sale of the relator's capital stock in March, 1946, for $3,600,000. The earlier sale had been received in evidence in the certiorari proceedings covering the prior tax years. There was also evidence, adduced by both relator and respondents, of large earnings produced by the hotel.
It is quite clear from the record that the increase in value found by the Appellate Division was owing, not to any disagreement with the court at Special Term as to the weight to be given to the evidence of land value or structural value, but rather as to the weight to be accorded to the evidence of the sales prices of the hotel and of its yearly earnings. (SeePeople ex rel. Hotel Paramount Corp. v. Chambers,
Giving to the hotel income or to the sale of the hotel enterprise any additional weight was error for an additional reason, having to do more particularly with the valuation of the building. Structural value fixes the maximum value even of an apartment house or office building whose income if capitalized would indicate a higher valuation. (See People ex rel. ManhattanSquare Beresford, Inc., v. Sexton,
The order of the Appellate Division should be reversed and the order of the Special Term affirmed, with costs in this court and in the Appellate Division.
LOUGHRAN, Ch. J., LEWIS, CONWAY, DESMOND and DYE, JJ., concur.
Order reversed, etc. [See