| Author | Message | ||
     Mammabear |
Octo- sorry to hear about your situation. I hope you can get it all straightened out. With all the reval's, I am not naive enough to think there are not errors out there. However, I can't understand why people who are sitting pretty in their investments (their homes which have appreciated so well here in Maplewood) want to jump up and down over a substantial increase in property taxes! Especially when it is pretty evident that they have been UNDERPAYING while others have been OVERPAYING for some time. It cracks me up! Also, think of it this way...if you make $30K/year, you pay a certain $ in income tax, right? When you get promoted and make $50K/year, do your taxes not go up? Of course they do! Newsflash...the same is true as it pertains to property values and real estate taxes. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Also, are the new values really that far off the mark? Do you think CVI came in here and valued all our properties incorrectly? (which by the way would be a wash!) Or is everyone just upset that they now have to pay their fair share? | ||
| John |
Interalia, I recall that post. I didn't get involved (i think) but I agree. Something need to be done about the way schools are funded. I think the reason I didn't comment was because I didn't really understand where it was going. Look the bottom line is we spent a lot of money to have someone tell us "yes the reval was in general OK". I think that money would be better spent to prove what is wrong with the current Property tax system. | ||
| Townie |
Interalia, Are you aware of the meeting that is going to be held in Maplewood (I believe March 27) to begin a process of getting a constitutional convention in the state to address property taxes, ultimately by direct voter referendum in November 2002? If you read the second post in this thread, it tells more: http://66.33.27.71/forum/ I believe Ellen Davenport was instrumental in getting the first meeting with state legislators held here. By the way, I have thought a lawsuit might be costly and produce no tax relief for highly taxed homes even if it was won, but I see no reason for the TC not to champion tax reform. I don't see what it would cost them or the town to do so. But I also don't see how it would change the reval any time sooner than 2002 or whenever the whole state gets around to changing the law. k. | ||
| Mtierney |
Townie: I guess I really don't get it. As I have stated previously, just over the past 10 years, I have been getting annual tax hikes of some $430, which, as Interalia notes, I just accepted. How could taxes of $11,875 (current) be considered okay on property, as you state, was at an underassessed value? Is not that amount of money high - check what that figures covers in many another town! Now, comes the fair reassessment: My taxes are going UP $5,820! For reasons I am too naive to contemplate, our TC rolled over. They disregarded, turned a deaf ear, ignored, whatever you want to say, to the heart felt pleas of many many residents who just can't come up with the "obscene" but fair tax hike. | ||
| Lydial |
Octofoil: I am one of the houses that is completely out of the ballpark -- I am so frustrated that the assessment review didn't address my obvious errors such as 330 extra SF -- I would like to speak to whomever "reviewed" my pages of comparables, photographs, deed, property card, etc. and disregarded them 100%. | ||
| John |
Octo, You must be one of those that truly were over assessed. You said you had an independent assessment that confirmed it. Can't you take that to the review of your assessment and use it as proof? Have you tried to have the assessment corrected? Did you get any results? | ||
| Townie |
Mammabear, Even I who has accepted the reval have trouble with your thinking here. Are you trying to be humorously provocative and I'm missing it? First of all, some people are jumping up and down because their assessment still isn't correct as far as they are concerned or because they can't afford the new taxes or both. When you get a raise your income goes up, and your income taxes never exceed your income! Not so with a house whose value goes up because someone with more money bought the house next door like yours at an extremely high price. | ||
| Townie |
Mtierney, Your previous tax bill wasn't your assessment. The fact you paid $11,875 doesn't mean you were underassessed. The fact that your house was probably assessed at less than $100K ceased to be accurate years ago. Your property was undervalued (or underassessed). There was a piece of paper that listed your house value at something less (I'm guessing) than $100K. Now you've been handed a piece of paper that says your property is worth, in today's market, $500K. If all other houses in town had increased 5 times in value like yours, your tax bill would still be $11,875. The problem is some people's houses only increased 3 times in value. By law, the town can only apply one rate of taxation to every homeowner in town (so much per $100 of value). I'm afraid the situation in Maplewood was complicated even more by the fact that, based on outdated property assessments, some homeowners had been being charged for more taxes than they legally owed, sometimes to the tune of more than $1,000 per year, and this was happening in those parts of town where income tends not to be high. So there were competing "heartfelt" pleas from longtime Maplewood residents to the TC. Finally the TC decided to assess everybody according to the law, which ended the illegal taxing in Maplewood but raised some people's taxes (legally) considerably. | ||
| Njjoseph |
Bobk, I think you're mistaken about the 3 year lock-in. Everything I've seen points to the tax assessor being able to adjust the assessments annually, based on values at October 1. Do you have documentation somewhere that supports your statement? | ||
| Octofoil |
We submitted proof of substantial errors to the assessor in the process so kindly arranged for by the TC. Our letter from the assessor was of the "too many of them so we can't get to yours" type. The independent assessment was obtained immediately thereafter (just a few days ago). Next step: the county. | ||
| Overtaxdalready |
Mamabear...augment your news flash for me. Assume the person is still making the same amount of money he/she was making prior to his/her PROPERTY taxes going up. Where does the money come from to pay the increase? | ||
| Aruba18 |
Octofoil - Your erroneous assessment is definitely NOT an exception (unless there are about 800 exceptions in town!) Like you and Lydial, we submitted our form, documentation, etc.., etc., etc. Our first reply was the "form letter" postcard, noting our correspondence regarding the assessment. Our second reply was received yesterday, and is the dreaded notice of property tax assessment. They completely ignored all of our correspondence and supporting documents, and have now increased our land assessment by $258,800.00 and our building assessment by $313,300.00!! We are now (apparently)in a tax bracket one dreams of, and despite what Mammabear thinks, our income will not magically increase to support these overinflated rates. So, I guess we'll see you (and hundreds of other town homeowners) in court. Good Luck! Jerry-you never answered my question. You stated that until the reval, our home was listed as the third highest value on our street. As of the reval, we are listed as the highest. We have done absolutely nothing to the house, unless the man from CV loved my redecorating! How do you explain this? | ||
| Gerardryan |
Lydial: I understand that winning a tax appeal means that there can be no changes by the town for 3 years. It might also mean that you can't appeal for 3 years but I am not so sure of that. Octo (and others): I am waiting for an electronic version of the book that was certified to the county so that I can issue an update and a new spreadsheet. If my quick back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct, then net of all the adjustments made, the 2000-equivalent rate is 2.76% (as compared to 2.75%). "All the adjustments made" reflects (I think) processing 40% of all requests received. | ||
| Gerardryan |
Aruba18. I most certainly did answer your question, just over a month ago. The URL for the posting I made, back on Feb 5: http://66.33.27.70/discus/messages/1/2297.html?WednesdayFebruary720011106am#POST23033 As I said then: if you were one of the top assessed houses on your street before the reval, and you are one of the top assessed houses on your street after the reval, then the reval did not change your relative valuation on your street. If it is wrong now then it was wrong before, and you ought to have appealed. In fact, as I pointed out to you then, I believe that your property taxes stick out like a sore thumb compared to all of your neighbors, before any reval happened. Shouldn't you have appealed a while ago? | ||
| Bobk |
Njoseph: I may be wrong but my understanding is that the reval numbers can not be increased unless there is another reval, the premises are sold or improvements are made. Mr Ryan: I believe that if you appeal and win you can appeal again the next year if values decrease, a very likely scenario in certain neighborhoods here in Maplewood. For everyones information here are some sale prices and taxes from the NY Times Home section this morning: Briarcliff Manor, NY $525k - $8,734 Greenwich, CT $590k - $5,038 Teaneck, NJ $185k - $4,949 | ||
| Njjoseph |
Bobk, anyone's house can be revalued at any time, by the tax assessor. If this were not to be the case, we would in the future find ourselves in the same position we are today: the assessments do not reflect fair market value and the tax distribution is not equitable. For example, if you and your neighbor have identical houses and $300K assessments today, but your neighbor sells his house for $400K this summer, his valuation could easily be changed to $400K. If yours did not change, he would be paying 33% more than you in taxes, for an identical house. Yes, I've simplified this, but this is the way it will work. The software that Mr. Galante has will enable him to review and make adjustments on all houses in a neighborhood when he sees that the average selling prices are increasing. | ||
| Bobk |
Njjoseph: I am talking about the first three years. After that, it is open season. | ||
| Njjoseph |
Bobk, I realize what you are saying but I haven't seen anything that confirms this, and I asked you in an earlier post if you had something in writing somewhere that did. The documentation I have in writing refers to the revals being done every year or two, without specifying a minimum wait period. Evenso, if you can't raise valuations if a house doesn't sell and you raise them for houses that do, you have created an inequity that we have been hoping to correct. For this reason, I believe that if there were to be a 3-year exclusion, it would have to be across-the-board, by law. | ||
| Lydial |
GeraldRyan - as long as you're here - why do you think that my assessment review apparently wasn't reviewed? I can accept that factors such as the condition of the house, age of bathroom and kitchen, may be subjective, but the SF is an error in the mathematical data that determines my assessment value. Can I find out who reviewed my material? Does the assessor make notes to explain the rejection? Can I see if there was any logic behind this decision? | ||
| Bobk |
Njjoseph: The information I have is from an attorney and is called The New Jersey Freese Act, at least informally. |
