Dixon Advisory Mayor Fulop’s purchase of a $ 2.4 million home, first reported by Hudson County View yesterday, raises serious questions.
According to the report, in June the Fulops bought the new luxury property on Ogden Avenue, next to their current home.
Despite its humble facade, the house has a rooftop pool with views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty and has been described in two tracks in Jersey Digs as a “trophy” property with “the celebrity and luxury cache to impress everyone” .
A search of the MLS (the authoritative database of properties for sale) reveals that the new Fulop house has never been offered for sale to the public.
Known for sharing the comings and goings of his family, the mayor has neither posted nor tweeted about his luck to land this one-of-a-kind property.
Now, nearly three months after the deal, the Fulops Hudson County View made a long, well-crafted statement about the purchase, including a growing family and aging parents.
Nobody should allow the mayor to want a nice house.
However, since he is the mayor, Jersey City residents have the right to know how he got the inside information about the property.
First, some background information is helpful.
The Mayor has a long and apparently mutually beneficial relationship with Dixon, an Australian investment firm with hundreds of millions of US homes, many in Jersey City.
In one of his first acts after taking office, the mayor canceled the city-wide revaluation of properties that had begun under his predecessor Jerramiah Healy. At the time, everyone agreed that homeowners in the city center pay far too little property tax compared to other parts of the city.
With its large portfolio of downtown properties, Dixon benefited from the mayor’s decision. Indeed, the four-year delay caused by Mayor Fulop’s ultimately unsuccessful litigation saved Dixon thousands, if not millions, of dollars in property taxes.
Then, in 2015, the Mayor through the city’s now indicted tax attorney Matthew O’Donnell, in a highly unusual move, ordered Hudson County’s tax authorities to suspend revaluation of certain properties, including nearly two dozen Dixon-owned properties pay higher taxes. The request was unusual in that the mayor was essentially asking that the city receive less tax revenue.
The board ultimately denied the request and proceeded with the re-evaluation. But if the mayor had been successful, he would have saved Dixon $ 84,219 in tax increases on five properties alone, according to the Jersey Journal.
Around the same time that Fulop was preparing to run for governorship, Dixon Advisory donated $ 300,000 to the mayor’s super-PAC, Coalition for Progress. Dixon also made great contributions to the Hudson County’s Democratic Organization.
In a long 2019 article that looked at Fulop’s relationship with the developers of Jersey City, Bloomberg.com cataloged the mayor’s other dealings with Dixon.
Dixon renovated the current Fulop’s home at 260 Ogden Avenue, and designed and built his home on Narragansett Beach, Rhode Island. In the Narragansett case, Bloomberg found that the amount charged by Dixon appeared to be well below the price charged by local contractors.
The then CEO of Dixon, Alan Dixon, “had frequent contacts with the mayor and his wife,” said Bloomberg. The company’s presence in Jersey City grew under Fulop.
In summary, the purchase of Ogden Ave. a long history of scratching each other precedes.
New Jersey’s local ethics law states: “No local government official or employee may use his official position or attempt to secure unjustified privileges or advantages for himself or others.”
It is hard to imagine that this transaction does not at least give the impression that the mayor has “secured this property” with his official position.
To solve this problem, here are just a few of the questions that need to be answered.
- Who approached whom regarding the availability of the house?
- Has Dixon spoken to other interested buyers?
- Has the mayor ever suggested that the house be publicly listed first to avoid the appearance of a bargain deal?
- What was the estimate?
- Who financed the mayor’s purchase?
- Why is the property valued at $ 1 million for tax purposes only?
It’s possible the transaction isn’t as bad as it looks. As a local real estate professional told the Jersey City Times, there are factors that militate against the notion that the mayor got a “treasure deal”.
For example, the property was “unrated,” meaning that a bank would be less willing to finance it due to uncertainty about its value. The real estate professional told JCT that the area did indeed appear to be priced high. Eventually, that person told JCT that Dixon is known for making private sales without publicly listing properties.
Let’s hope our real estate professional is right.
However, Jersey City residents shouldn’t have to trust that a major transaction between their mayor and a company with a long history of political donations, favors, and business relationships with the mayor is undisputed.