September 6, 1981

Many New York City real estate owners are scrambling to close big sales they have in the works before Oct. 1. That's when the city starts collecting the new 10 percent capital gains tax on milliondollar sales of income-producing property. ''We're all rushing around like a bunch of nuts trying to get deals closed,'' said Melvyn Kaufman, a partner in the William Kaufman organization, an office builder. ''It's true of us, it's true of the whole city. Whatever we've got in the hopper, we're looking to get in under the wire.'' Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, for example, will escape a gains tax of more than $7 million by closing the $161 million sale of its headquarters at 350 Park Avenue on Sept. 23. The bank announced a $70 million after-tax profit on the sale.

Herschel Walker picked up today where he left off last season, gaining 161 yards on 30 carries and scoring one touchdown as Georgia defeated Tennessee, 44-0, to open the season with its 14th consecutive victory. Georgia, which was undefeated and the top-ranked team in the national wire-service polls last year, appeared considerably stronger today than it was at this stage a year ago. In its opener last year, Georgia rallied from a 15-0 deficit to beat Tennessee, 16-15. The Bulldogs have not lost since their next-to-last game of the 1979 season and have the longest current winning streak in major college football.

DETROIT I T has been two years of unrelenting misery for the American automobile industry. And what could well be the third, the 1982 model year, is beginning this month on the note of scaled-down production, a reluctant marketplace and few signs of a real rebound anytime soon. Total sales of American- and foreign-built passenger cars for model year 1981 are not expected to be much over nine million, virtually the same as 1980, and almost 2.5 million cars fewer than in 1973, the best year ever. Only as a result of severe cost cutting will the General Motors Corporation be able to show a profit for the calendar year. The Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation have also cut costs, but they should still end up in the red. After so much difficulty, the industry has swallowed some bitter medicine. It has, in effect, concluded that the visions of evergreater growth, of three- and four-car families, are now bankrupt. To survive, the auto makers have substantially scaled down their work force over the last two and a half years, and they have closed numerous plants and sold off nonautomotive operations that competed for precious capital.

HARTFORD THE first round in the race for municipal offices - in some places the only important round -takes place on Tuesday in 55 towns and cities. Nominations for offices ranging from mayor and selectman to town clerk are at stake in about 65 separate primaries, most of them Democratic. Contests between Democrats in five cities, some of which are expected to be close, will choose the probable winner of the general election in November. The five cities are Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury, and New Britain. In those cases and others, the winners will be chosen by a small fraction of the voters; only those registered in the party are eligible to vote in the primary, and many of them are expected to stay home. In 1979, voter turnout ranged from 66 percent (in an unusual, three-way contest in New Haven) to 26 percent in a Democratic primary in Danbury.

NORWALK SOMETIMES when Cantor Deborah Katchko-Zimmerman is singing a portion of the Friday night Sabbath service at Congegation Beth El here, she says she feels a special awareness of her own family history and its deep immersion in Jewish music. At those moments, her mother accompanying her on the synagogue organ, she knows that her father, Theodore, also a cantor, is probably singing the same portion at another synagogue in New Britain. Furthermore, they are likely to be performing the music composed by her late grandfather. ''It's a beautiful feeling,'' she says. Noting the mystical bond that she senses among the family members, she adds wistfully, ''I'm truly helping to carry on a tradition.''