New York buyers already pay a flat 1 percent tax on home purchases of $1 million or more. Now, there would be a scale of graduated levies that would start at 1 percent. The rate would increase at $2 million and continue to rise until it reaches a top of 4.15 percent on any amount over $25 million.

The tax is expected to raise $365 million this year, money that would secure about $5 billion in bonds for mass transit.

Bess Freedman, chief executive officer of Brown Harris Stevens in New York, said she’s not happy about the new tax -- but she’s relieved.

“Do we love it? No,” she said. “But we can digest it.”

If the levy had been in place for 2018, it would have affected about 26 percent of Manhattan’s residential market, or anything above $2 million, according to Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. In Brooklyn, just 8.1 percent of deals were in that price range, he said.

‘Don’t Live Here’
To Pamela Liebman, president of brokerage Corcoran Group, the mansion tax is damaging to the whole market and a loud-and-clear message from officials that it doesn’t matter if the barrier to entry becomes unreasonable for big-spenders. In the past weeks, the brokerage has lost deals in the $25 million range over concerns about taxation.

“It’s particularly onerous on the high end, and these are people who have choices -- they could buy here, but they don’t have to,” she said. “I have no issue with a small increase, but a 4 percent tax on expensive apartments is basically saying: Don’t live here.”

James Parrott, the economist whose proposal was the basis for the pied-a-terre tax legislation, says the mansion tax is both good and bad. On one hand, it will help pay for transit. But he also worries that it will be difficult to use the revenue for bonds because levies on home sales are lumpy, rising and falling from year to year.

Also, there’s the matter of fairness. Foreign buyers, for example, don’t pay income taxes, but the transit system and the city’s services contribute to the value of their properties, he says. The industry argues the opposite, saying wealthy second-home buyers spend money in the city while they’re in town and that bolsters employment from doormen to shop clerks on Fifth Avenue. And they don’t add kids to the schools or burden the transit system.

Still, it’s hard for the industry to declare victory, according to Parrott.