NY mortgage tax and unlocking equity

[Mike A.]

As we expand into NY, we are having to learn about this BS mortgage tax. We do not have this in CT nor NJ, only NY (yes, I am aware a few other States have a mort. tax). It's partly the reason why we've been using our exquity in our other non-NY buildings to rehab our NY buildings. However, we have a small conundrum here. We now have three buildings, two fully rented on should be rented 100% by the end of August, with zero mortgage. One building is worth 480k, one building is worth 525k and one building is worth 1.2m. All-in-all, about 2m in real estate or so. In theory, we could pull out a signficant amount for around 2.5% 10 year fixed. I am a numbers guy and that 1.75% mort. tax in NY is killing me. There is also an inspection and legal fee of 6k and a 1% fee for mort. origination. As you can see, it's pretty expensive to extract said equity. Our buildings in other states, we're predominately in CT, but now have a couple in NJ, have been financing our NY rehabs.

Ideas?