Question on town reassessment

[riverrat]

My Town just had a complete reassessment done. I received the results yesterday. My thoughts were the assessment May change the value of a property but the taxes would stay relatively close to the same.

The old tax rate was based on a 41% valuation. it's now based on 100% valuation.

My taxes are estimated to be raised 90 percent. Most everyone I talked with about this says the same thing. 

What am I missing?

Get this, we now have until March 29 to contact the assessor with a grievance. Lol

[mowin]

Went through the same thing could yrs ago.  We're now at 100% assessment from 40%.

Went through the process as did a crap lot of others.  They couldn't show me where a simulator properly sold for the money they assessed us for, but it didn't help. Our request was denied, as well as 99% of the others.  

And politicians wonder why NY has the highest population loss. 

[Moho81]

Ugh, that sucks! 

All I know is trying to fight a reassessment is very hard. You have to somehow prove that you can not sell your house/property for the new assessed value.

The Town I work in just did the same thing. Reassessed every ones property and raised the rate 11.4 percent. The building I work was reassessed in 2023 for an additional $100,000 and again in 2024 for another $150,000. So somehow the building has increased in value $250,000 in 2 years. It could never be sold for the assessed value but how exactly do you prove that especially with the short time frame that they give you. 

[Buckmaster7600]

I’ve had this happen on 2 of my properties, tried fighting both and lost. Contacted my lawyer that I use for real estate and he said not worth it they won’t change. Just add another chip to the get the hell out of New York bowl.

[phade]

It is mind boggling. Same experience as everyone else who posted. Ours got jacked in ‘23. The amount per month I paid in taxes went up 40%. There is no way I can sell my home for what it is now assessed - not even close. The assessor is a complete moron who is incapable of being a human being. Town officials love her though. She does this for several towns and the letter indicating the increase DIRECTED US TO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOWN to fight the assessment. She is so bad at her job she used a canned letter for multiple towns and didn’t fix it. I brought the issue up with the town and they did not want to send correction letters out. 

Now our FD put out a plan to build an $11.5 MILLION dollar facility for a volunteer department. Keep in mind the current one was/is used to staff for decades when the population was MUCH larger for the town. That adds $31 per month to the bill for 30 years on a starter home in the town. A nice home is double that. This facility is ridiculous - training rooms, sanitizing, FIVE offices, and it goes on and on. There was zero sense of balance or being reasonable to scale. We do not even have a stoplight in our town. Not even a freaking stoplight - that’s how small we are. I’m all for a reasonable new facility given what they do, but this is overkill. It’ll get passed because small town politics will ostracize you if you dare speak up against the public services. The problem is that it has nothing to do with that but rather asking a municipality to demonstrate fiscal responsibility appropriately. Our town is so small that our school had to merge football teams with the neighbor district this season.

They also give next to no time to appeal. It takes time to research comps and build a case. Nope, tough luck. The FD released their plan on social media last week. The mailed pamphlet (fancy high gloss giant bifold nevertheless) arrived yesterday. The public comment meeting is this coming week, the vote is next week. How absolutely unreasonable is that?

I definitely want to bounce after the kid graduates. It may not be better elsewhere but it sure as heck may be, and at least it won’t be death by taxation.

Edited March 21, 2024 by phade

[Keith Nehrke]

We fought and won against a severely increased assessment years ago. However, we were assessed at 100% the whole time. I simply showed up to the grievance hearing armed with numerous examples of comparable homes that had sold in our area over the past six months, as well as a chart comparing our home to homes that had sold for what they said our home was worth - and those homes invariably had more land, more space, were newer, or had obvious improvements over our dwelling. 

I think that it's worth fighting it, but don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Be prepared with hard data to make your case. And our assessment did increase, just not as much as they'd wanted.

[BowmanMike]

Same thing happened in our town,hartwick,about 10 years ago. It is a result of the reassessment not having been done in forever. We had lots of properties that were valued low because of the buddy system with the old assessor. When the revaluation happened a lot of people were pissed, but the old numbers were skewed and outdated. Not to say that some valuations are whacky,you should compare similar properties and make sure yours is not an outlier. But having been at 41% is not great. no surprise it is double when going to 100%.

[Nomad]

To Phades points about the FD,there’s  no doubt many volunteer houses and bigger and better then our city ones. That’s due to a few factors , they have to be built to modern NFPA standards, plus it’s very difficult to attract and hold volunteers, one thing they do to counter that is give them a nice building with workout rooms etc. sanitation or decom is a big deal we die of job related cancer, I know several who have . Keeping things clean and away from living quarters is a big deal ,as well as venting diesel fumes out of the buildings . This all comes at a cost .

 

 

[riverrat]

32 minutes ago, BowmanMike said:

Same thing happened in our town,hartwick,about 10 years ago. It is a result of the reassessment not having been done in forever. We had lots of properties that were valued low because of the buddy system with the old assessor. When the revaluation happened a lot of people were pissed, but the old numbers were skewed and outdated. Not to say that some valuations are whacky,you should compare similar properties and make sure yours is not an outlier. But having been at 41% is not great. no surprise it is double when going to 100%.

Every property in the town was taxed at 41% valuation. So that seems like it would be a wash when all are now valued at 100%.

[Dinsdale]

49 minutes ago, Keith Nehrke said:

 

I think that it's worth fighting it, but don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Be prepared with hard data to make your case. And our assessment did increase, just not as much as they'd wanted.

This.

I've done mine maybe 6 occasions on reassement and "won" every time. 

When it decreased, I even got more off. And generally I'm within a few percentage points of the reduction I ask for when it's gone up.

I watch what others bring and it's embarrassing to argue a legal proceeding with nothing more then a napkin with a couple numbers scribbled from who nows where.

[riverrat]

Another thing I need to look into the Amish invasion of the last 10 years has them paying way more than the property was worth before they were here.

 

[Buckmaster7600]

58 minutes ago, Keith Nehrke said:

We fought and won against a severely increased assessment years ago. However, we were assessed at 100% the whole time. I simply showed up to the grievance hearing armed with numerous examples of comparable homes that had sold in our area over the past six months, as well as a chart comparing our home to homes that had sold for what they said our home was worth - and those homes invariably had more land, more space, were newer, or had obvious improvements over our dwelling. 

I think that it's worth fighting it, but don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Be prepared with hard data to make your case. And our assessment did increase, just not as much as they'd wanted.

I could see it working with a house, much easier to compare to comps. Both of mine were vacant woodlots. Nearly impossible to find another 100-200 acre lot that’s comparable that’s sold in the last 6 months.

[riverrat]

Also, the reassessment was done by using Google maps and  recent property purchases by EMPM in tonowonda NY.

What I'm trying to figure out is everyone's school taxes went up a lot. The school has a budget obviously and taxes are assessed on total property values in the town. How could everyone's taxes Go up so much? Is the state going to lower the amount they're providing the school district?

Seems like it would be the same for the country taxes also.

 

[virgil]

Riverrat, i'm in your area and got the same letter.  i'll have to look at it again because i got the opposite impression.  it looks to me like my taxes were lowered- considerably.  I saw that the assessment rate was raised to 100%.  But, the 'market' value was lowered a bit.  My place may be categorized differently than your as i believe mine is considered 'seasonal', or something like that.

[ZAG]

Luckily I haven’t seen a reassessment yet. I did have a realtor friend say she has in-laws looking in our neighborhood and our place fits the bill and she suggested a price well, well, well above what we pd just 4yrs ago. Definitely has us thinking as we’re on a 2yr plan to leave NY anyways.