Closing costs: Queens vs Nassau County

Queens is one of the five boroughs, so it sits inside New York City's tax system. Nassau County starts at the city line and sits outside it. That single fact drives almost the entire cost difference at the closing table.

Rates below come from the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, the NYC Department of Finance, and the filed TIRSA title rate manual. Current as of August 2026. Tax rates change. Confirm the numbers with your attorney before you rely on them.

The transfer taxes

Most taxable conveyances in New York State pay a state transfer tax of $2.00 for each $500 of the price or fractional part of it, which works out to roughly 0.40%. It applies where consideration exceeds $500, and there are exemptions. The seller pays it, identically in Queens and in Nassau.

On top of that, New York City charges its own Real Property Transfer Tax, the RPTT. For a one- to three-family house, a condo unit or a co-op apartment, the RPTT is 1.00% if the price is $500,000 or less and 1.425% above that. The seller pays it, and the return is due within 30 days. Nassau County has no equivalent city-level tax, so a Queens seller above $500,000 carries roughly 1.425% of the price that a Nassau seller does not.

The mansion tax, and what people get wrong about it

The state's mansion tax is 1% of the price on residential property selling for $1,000,000 or more. The buyer pays it. It applies statewide, so it hits Nassau exactly the same as Queens.

The often-quoted "up to 3.9%" figure is two separate taxes stacked. The 1% mansion tax is one. The other is a supplemental tax that exists only inside New York City, starts at $2,000,000, and runs from 0.25% up to 2.90% at $25,000,000 and above. The buyer pays that too. Nassau buyers never pay the supplemental tax at any price. There is also an additional 0.25% seller-side tax on residential sales of $3,000,000 or more — a New York State additional base tax that applies to New York City conveyances, not part of the city's own RPTT — which again Nassau does not have.

Mortgage recording tax

If you borrow, New York taxes the recording of the mortgage. In Queens the total is $2.05 per $100 of the loan for mortgages under $500,000. For a one-, two- or three-family house or an individual residential condo unit securing $500,000 or more, it is $2.175 per $100. In Nassau County the total is $1.05 per $100 at any loan size. On a $640,000 loan that difference alone is about $7,200.

Two adjustments matter. Where the property has six or fewer residential units, state law puts the 0.25% special additional component on the lender rather than on you. And where the property is a one- or two-family residence, the first $10,000 of the loan is excluded when computing the 0.30% additional component.

CEMA

Section 255 of the Tax Law lets a supplemental mortgage be recorded without paying the tax again, except on genuinely new borrowing. In practice the seller's existing lender assigns the surviving mortgage to the buyer's lender and the two are consolidated, so the buyer pays mortgage recording tax only on the difference between the new loan and the assigned balance. It is not free: expect lender assignment fees, extra legal work and several weeks of added lead time, and it needs a cooperative seller. Ask your attorney to price it against the projected saving before committing to it.

Title insurance

New York is a filed-rate state. Rates are filed with and approved by the state, and TIRSA member rates are not haggled over the way a discount would be. An insurer may file its own approved rates independently, so compare filed premiums rather than assuming every company is identical. Queens and Nassau are both in TIRSA Zone 2, so for member rates the premium on the same price is the same in both. What you can compare is the ancillary charges, which sit outside the filed rate. If you take a loan at the same time, the loan policy is charged at 30% of the loan rate up to the owner's policy amount.

Co-op, condo, house: the difference that actually matters

A co-op buyer is buying shares in a corporation plus a proprietary lease. That is personal property, not real property, and two consequences follow:

• Mortgage recording tax is generally not charged on a co-op share loan, because the lender files a UCC-1 rather than recording a mortgage against land. In Queens on a large loan this is the single biggest saving available.
• Title insurance is generally not purchased on a co-op, because there is no deed to insure.

What people get wrong is assuming the transfer taxes fall away too. They do not. The city's RPTT expressly covers transfers of co-op stock shares, the state transfer tax applies, and the mansion tax applies to a co-op at $1,000,000 just as it does to a house. Condos and houses are real property and pay everything.

Worked example: $800,000 with 20% down

Same price, same $640,000 loan, one-family house or condo. Figures are rounded and exclude attorney fees, lender fees, recording fees, escrow and tax adjustments, and brokerage compensation, none of which have fixed published rates.

At the same price and the same loan, the Queens buyer pays about $7,200 more and the Queens seller about $11,400 more. That is roughly $18,600 of extra transaction cost on an $800,000 trade, and it is almost entirely the two New York City taxes.

What is not on this page

Attorney fees, brokerage compensation and co-op flip taxes are all real costs and none of them have a published standard rate. Attorney fees are quoted per matter, so get the number in writing before you retain. Since 17 August 2024, offers of compensation to a buyer's broker can no longer be published on an MLS and buyers sign a written agreement with their agent before touring, so compensation on both sides is negotiated separately and openly. A co-op flip tax is set by that building's own governing documents and is not a government tax. Read the offering plan.