| Author |
Message |
    
John
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 3:27 pm: |     |
Does that mean Ffof that you belive the assessments were at least close to fair? |
Bobk
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 3:40 pm: | |
I, for one, would be happy to sell my house for the assessed value or within $25k of that value.
The problem is that I have to find somewhere else to live and I still have a kid in school and we would like to let him finish out at Columbia.
As an aside, a lot of you are confusing listing prices with sales. There are a lot of houses on the market at over the assessed value. The question is, with the now certain higher taxes will they sell at anywhere near those prices??
I kinda doubt it. When you are talking $550k there are options outside of Maplewood where the taxes are going to be half of what they are here. |
Konigen
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 3:56 pm: | |
Dave -- lol! |
Townie
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 4:14 pm: | |
Isn't it true that the town has now acquired software that allows Gallante to adjust assessments if they get out of whack with a certain formula? I thought this is what I heard discussed. If the market continues north in one part of town, but not in others, I thought the software was to protect from a situation like the one that developed the last time. However, if all housing prices rise fairly evenly, we stick with the assessments. Anyone else clearer about this?
kathleen |
Njjoseph
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 4:19 pm: | |
It's true, but Mr. Galante actually has to actively use the software, and then make actual decisions on whether or not he should adjust assessments. He may decide to look at it during 2001, or he can wait until 2002 or later. Hopefully, he'll do the first review in 6 months and the second 6 months after that, so that we can make corrections to CV's work. After that, I would hope that the revaluations will be much more in line with reality and won't need to be adjusted as frequently. |
Lydial
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 4:19 pm: | |
If houses are uniformly underassessed or overassessed then that's fair, it's the inconsistancy that irks me.
Bacata, to answer your question to Dyunck - I'm not selling my house but if I did I would list it $30,000 less than the assessment I have now. |
Bobk
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 4:25 pm: | |
Townie:
I believe that there is a three year lock in after the reval is finalized where assessments can not be increased.
I kind of doubt that during that three year period there are going to be a lot of reductions since other areas can not be increased. |
Townie
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 4:57 pm: | |
Bobk and Njjoseph,
I guess I had the impression that any real disparity between one part of town or the other was evident in the normal course of Gallante's work even before the software, one of the reasons the prompted getting off the dime about the reval. But the software made it easier. Although I didn't mean to imply the software just hummed along reassessing people's houses. But I did think he was allowed to do it whenever the disparity reached a certain numerical spread. But I'm a numbers idiot, so I'm just offering this as impressionistic recollections. Interesting that there might be a 3-year lock, and I certainly see some wisdom in not changing people's assessments too often. Seems to me banks alone would find that irritating.
I don't know what you mean bobk by your second comment. |
Mammabear
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 5:24 pm: | |
Just to keep it interesting, based on my personal experience, I think CVI underassessed houses in my area.
Until recently, we lived off Prospect. My house, as well as my neighbor's house, sold for approx. $60-70K over CVI's assessed value.
See, I look at my home as an investment. And it's a great one if you know anything about appreciation of assets, etc. Whether you want to sell or not, you should be taxed on what your house would sell for if you chose to sell it. Period. That's FMV in it's simplest form. |
John
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 5:32 pm: | |
Yes Mammabear. Under current law, that is what you should be taxed at. However, that does not address the issue of services used. Nor does it encourage anyone to improve their home or their community. |
Mtierney
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 5:43 pm: | |
Explain to me what is "right" about paying $17,690 in taxes.
If it forces people out of their homes (railroading) then it is social engineering. |
Lydial
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:04 pm: | |
I think the 3-year lock only applies to houses that have gone through the county appeal - not 100% certain that's the case though - anyone know for sure? |
John
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:08 pm: | |
There is nothing right about 10K+ in taxes. As I've said all along OUR TAXES ARE TOO HIGH!!! But to those that say the new valuations are wrong I say sorry but most of them are right. law mandates them and we must accept the new taxes until we change the system. To those that say they've been paying more than their fair share I say, You use the same services. What was fair? What is Fair? What will be Fair? Lets get the TC to go to the county and the state and explain why the current system is flawed. Lets find ways to reduce the Tax BASE. |
Nakaille
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:17 pm: | |
LydiaL, is that $30,000 within 10% of your assessment value? (ie. is your home assessed at at least 300K?) I think that is the leeway considered reasonable under the law. Does anyone else know this?
And why wouldn't you try to sell it for the assessed price? What would be the harm in testing the waters, so to speak? If it didn't sell in a reasonable amount of time (and 2 weeks is NOT the benchmark here) you could always drop it 10K or 20K or even 30K. Others (John, for one) have noted listing prices 20 to 39% above assessment. See Mlj's post above concerning the continuing strength of the market.
I have heard there are still bidding wars going on so it seems the market has shown no depression as yet. The trend does seem to be continuing, as I noted earlier. So 2000 data may not be insufficient at all. Maybe CV knows more about market trends than we all thought. It will be very interesting to see what all this looks like in 6 and 12 months. I do hope Mr. Gallante makes good use of the new software. For all our sakes.
Bacata |
Townie
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:32 pm: | |
Mtierney,
It's never clear to me from your posts if you realize that if all homes in Maplewood had been correctly assessed 20 years ago and then risen in value equally during the past 20 years, your taxes would not have risen at all, even though your assessment rose. Once the incorrect assessments were corrected, all of us who had been underassessed began to pay our fair share of the tax burden of the whole town, and those who had been overassessed now pay only their fair share. You're right that the railroad helped boost your and my property value ahead of that of the rest of the town, adding a kicker.
You keep speaking of social engineering as if there were some deliberate decision made before the reval began to tax people out of their homes in certain areas of town. Can you explain what you think that decision was and who made it? And how the plan was carried out? I've honestly never understood your thinking on this and I'd rather not keep guessing.
kathleen |
Townie
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:39 pm: | |
John,
Apart from the public schools, which by constiutional law have to be made available free of charge to all children in the district, whether their parents rent or own, what is your point about services? Almost all of us never have used many of the town's most expensive services, nor will we ever. What would be a more fair way for everyone to chip in to pay for police and fire instead of a property tax?
k. |
Townie
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 6:45 pm: | |
I found this on another thread regarding Galante's keeping up with changing prices. It was posted by Vic DeLuca:
"The Township Committee has asked Mr. Galante to regularly look at sales data and take action when and where it is warranted. I believe a review will occur this year (all sales until October 1, 2001) and periodically in the future. We now have the software that makes the process much easier.
We did discuss passing a resolution requiring a future township committee to have a revaluation in 2010. By law, we cannot bind them but we are looking at a way to give them an advisory opinion." |
Octofoil
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 7:28 pm: | |
For what its worth, I would be delighted to sell our home for 150,000 less than the assessed valuation. Thats how far off CV's numbers are. And still are because their are so many requests for review that Galante et al can't review them all. I would love to think that our home is worth the money that CV said it was worth. If it were true, it would certainly change my planning for the future-for the better. I'd do my darndest to find a way to pay the taxes. But, independent assessment has confirmed my suspicions: it just ain't so. CV missed/ignored/whatever several important aspects of our home. They had a figure in mind and they found a way to get to it, regardless (as alluded to by Galante at the workshop).
Is our erroneous assessment an exception? I'd sure like to think so. I would really hate to think that we paid as much money as we did for garbage. I continue to believe that the majority of assessments are/were reasonably close to reality. But, I stand before you (metaphorically, at least) as evidence that at least one of the assessments was well and seriously off the mark. The question is, how many others are there? IMHO, if the rate of serious errors (like ours) is greater than some figure, and in my mind that figure is about 5% (but debatable), then we are due a refund from CV.
So, at last count, Galante was reporting about 900 requests for review. Out of a population of about 6,800. How many have resulted in adjustments? How many were in the "can't get to it" category? How many will go on to the county? How many of those will be adjusted? Of course, the only "knowns" right now are those that have resulted in adjustments thus far and the number of "can't get to it"s. Jerry/TC, will you share that info with us? |
Interalia
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 8:03 pm: | |
John: Just wanted to support your idea about taking it to the county or the state. I have lived in Maplewood for 19 years and although I knew that the property taxes were very high, I guess because they moved up in dribs and drabs, I rolled with it. The results of my CV reval were outrageous and the consequential tax increase obscene. I guess my disappointment came when the TC was faced with accepting these numbers, rejecting them or taking alternative action. A week ago I proposed that a better solution would have been for the TC to realize that 'enough is enough' and do what is obviously in need of being done...champion the reform of property tax laws in the state, which include how schools receive their funding. A poster on this site accused me of wanting to waste more taxpayer dollars going after a cause we would surely lose. In my opinion, it is going to be a highly taxed town (or county) that does push for reform. Can't beat Essex County for that! |
John
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 - 9:21 pm: | |
Kathleen,
The police and fire departments are part of those services I'm speaking of. So is The DPW and road maintenance, the libraries, the parks, Is the recreation department included in our taxes? Anyway the point is these services are available to everyone. You don't get a greater share because you pay more taxes. You get a greater share when you use them more. Again I don't mean to say that someone with a 100K home should pay the same as someone with a 600k home. But the person with the 600k home probably should not be paying 6 times as much either. Except the current law says he/she must. |
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