Department of Finance.

A long effort to provide property tax information on the Internet has been achieved by the Department of Finance. Armed with block and lot information, Internet users can quickly obtain current and tentative assessment information on more than one million properties in the City of New York.

Those that register particular blocks and lots and water accounts can also, within seconds, obtain access to more financially sensitive information, including SCRIE accounts and water bills. A few days after registration, which requires your name, a user name, password and e-mail address, Finance will permit access to histories of payment.

Although the page can be difficult to find, and the link was sometimes not working correctly late last week, NYCproperty can be accessed directly through www.nyclink.org/nycproperty, and was a featured news site on the NYCLink homepage.

One thing to watch for: recently purchased properties do not always reflect current ownership, so new owners should also register their title for billing purposes through the main Finance pages, and separately, for water bills.

Finance officials explain the information is also not all "real time,' as is the FAIRTAX system, which is available for a fee, so some information may need to be verified.

But for those that have multiple properties and want to get a free, fast, overall picture of accounts either from the office or a Florida beach, it's an easy way to check it out.