I would do some deeper research into this. In some cases the abatement will cost you more than your standard tax bill depending on the property. Additionally, I just moved to a very high tax suburb and the spread between the suburb and JC wasn’t massive, maybe 4 a year. Which on paper seems like a lot, but when you factor in constantly increasing school budgets, municipality budget increases, and then PILOTs expiring which will cause the municipality to take in less taxes with no guarantee it’ll lower school taxes, they’re destined to go up.

You could say suburb taxes will go up, and they will, but JC’s low rate isn’t out of the kindness of the city’s heart, it’s due to mismanagement and a perfect storm of conditions that will end.

Additionally, since the Bayonne boxes are new, there’s no assessed value on the books so you won’t really know what the taxes are until you’re assessed or if you do the abatement.

I was looking in the heights but the cities tax future scared me, the door to door commute to work would be about the same as where we bought in the suburbs, and I got significantly more space and land for the price. I wanted desperately to stay in JC, we just couldn’t make it work unless we rented forever.

Edit: Also don’t know what your budget is, but the new build Bayonne boxes skyrocketed this year. We saw (arguably the nicest of the bunch) one in April (listed for $650,000 and it sold for $635,000). The last one we looked at in September was listed at $900,000, was not as nice and was on a less desirable block.