Cost segregation in Westchester County

The buildings

Westchester’s cities are older than its suburbs. Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains, Port Chester, Ossining and Peekskill all have downtowns of prewar apartment houses and mixed-use buildings with apartments over stores, much like the Bronx neighborhoods to the south of them, and renovated in stages in much the same way. Around them are garden apartment complexes from the decades after the war, many later converted to cooperatives, some still rentals.

The newer story is beside the Metro-North stations. New Rochelle and White Plains have rezoned their downtowns for towers, Yonkers has rebuilt its waterfront, and smaller places such as Tuckahoe, Mamaroneck, Harrison and Port Chester have added mid-rise rentals within a walk of the train. These are new buildings with amenity spaces, structured parking and complete construction records.

The county’s commercial property runs along the Interstate 287 corridor and Central Avenue. There are office parks, several of which are being redeveloped for apartments, medical use and recreation, and there are shopping centers and freestanding retail buildings on their own lots, where site improvements make up a considerable part of the cost.

Records

Every city, town and village in Westchester has its own building department, and the quality of the public record varies from one to the next. The owner’s own files therefore matter more than they do in the city. Contracts, requisitions and change orders for new buildings, invoices for roof, boiler, paving and apartment renovation projects for older ones, and the appraisal and closing statement for an acquisition are the documents the preparer asks for first.

Common situations

An investor who has just bought downtown apartment buildings in Yonkers or New Rochelle. A developer who has completed a rental building near a station and is holding it. A purchaser of a suburban office building who is refitting it for medical tenants, where the renovation records and the leases together establish what the owner paid for. The services page describes how each of these is approached.

Site visits

Visits are made by car or by train and are arranged with the property manager or the superintendent. For a suburban office or retail property the grounds are covered as carefully as the building, since parking areas, lighting, signage and landscaping are part of what is being documented.

The page on multifamily cost segregation describes the components typically examined in apartment and mixed-use buildings.

Other areas served

Highbridge Studies works throughout the New York City metro area, including New Jersey: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Jersey City and Hoboken, Bergen County, Newark and Essex County, Monmouth County and New Jersey.