| Author | Message | ||
     Brett Citizen Username: Bmalibashksa Post Number: 676 Registered: 7-2003 |
Does the tax assessor do all the houses at the same time? | ||
| bobk Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 4599 Registered: 5-2001 |
A reassessment is done by the local tax assessor. This is what Millburn did. I kind of doubt if he visited every house in town to be honest. A revaluation is done by an outside company, which is what Maplewood did when they hired CVI. | ||
| mrosner Citizen Username: Mrosner Post Number: 963 Registered: 4-2002 |
Brett: When a reval is done, a outside service would be hired. The village has one tax assessor and they would review all the data. | ||
| Brett Citizen Username: Bmalibashksa Post Number: 677 Registered: 7-2003 |
Mrosner: Other then being against the law why would that be unfair? The buyers paid that amount for the house so that is what it is worth at the time. If you are going to pay 500G for a house that’s what you’ll pay tax on. I’ll stop asking after this, I obviously don’t know a thing about taxes. Thank god my sister deals with all my money. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 447 Registered: 3-2003 |
Mark: You have said in the past that if it were put to a vote, people would not vote for a revaluation. Of course they're not going to vote in favor of a revalution. No town does a revaluation based on a vote of the public. If by public discussion you mean educating the public about how a revaluation works, fine. It would probably be helpful. But to say that you've had discussions with the public and the general consensus is that they don't want a revaluation is not how the law works. You recall that I came to a BOT meeting about two year's ago and requested a revalution. Your question was what if prices go down. Well, that was two years ago and the situation has just gotten worse. | ||
| mrosner Citizen Username: Mrosner Post Number: 964 Registered: 4-2002 |
doublea: I did not mean to imply that a town should not do a reval based on the majority. We will have to do one. There is no such thing as a good time to have one, but there are some times that are worse than others. Right now prices seem to have stabalized and the market does seem to have settled a little and I still think it creates more problems trying to do a reval when the market is as strong as it was one or two years ago (as evidenced in MW). | ||
| patjoyce Citizen Username: Patjoyce Post Number: 49 Registered: 7-2001 |
I agree with Mark that it is unwise to guess at a timeline when you are talking about getting the votes required. The dialogue should probably move from this forum to one of the sub-committees. I think it makes sense to see what the tax implications of the redevelopment will eventually be, before we do a reval. Patrick | ||
| Allan J Rosen Citizen Username: Allanrosen Post Number: 61 Registered: 4-2003 |
1) Revaluations are revenue neutral. The amount fo money to be raised by taxation is not affected by a reval. Some taxes go up or down depending upon whether or not they were relatively underassessed or overassessed. You cannot assume that because someone near you in a house which sold for more than yours is paying less taxes that a reval will change the relative amounts both pay. 2) Maplewood waited roughly 20 years before their recent reval. 3) The problem which surfaced in South Orange after the last reval in 1991 (approx) was that many people appealed the new valuations which were done at the height of a boom and the town lost about 1 1/2 million dollars in refunds over 2 years; and the town can't go after the new underassessed at that time. So the entiree public is faced with the fact that a reval can result in higher taxes than if none were done because new costs (in this case refunds) have to be added to the budget. The result may be more fairness but also somewhat higher taxes; and this is why public officials prefer to delay revals. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 448 Registered: 3-2003 |
I can't agree with you agreeing to a 9% school tax increase and balking on a revaluation. I've been through this with you at the BOT meeting and I understand revaluations pretty well. How long are you going to delay? This is what happened to Maplewood and Newark. My understanding is that the 1991 revaluation was handled badly. This was a previous tax assessor. My taxes are $21,000. Comparable houses pay taxes of $16,000 - 17,000. A school tax increase of 9% adds another $1000 onto my tax bill. I could stomach the increase a lot better if I were paying my fair share, which I'm not. The tax assessor agrees with me. | ||
| ashear Citizen Username: Ashear Post Number: 952 Registered: 5-2001 |
Brett - I think the answer to your question is that two houses next to one another with the same value would have differnt assessments if one changed hands and the other did not. | ||
| jam Citizen Username: Jam Post Number: 28 Registered: 9-2001 |
So who is responsible for triggering the revaluation ? What is their justification for not doing one, when the town rules apparently require it. | ||
| kathy Citizen Username: Kathy Post Number: 744 Registered: 5-2001 |
Jam, Although the state apparently wants towns to do revals every 10 years, they are rarely done that often. It was 20 years before Maplewood's recent reval and 20 years to the 1991/2 reval in South Orange. After much nudging from the state, Newark has finally done (or is still doing?) its first reval in 40(!!) years. A reval is a big project and costs money to do. Some people's taxes will inevitably increase, so they will be unhappy. Also it takes a year or so to do a reval, and prices can change in that time, so if prices are going up (as they were in Maplewood) the people who are assessed last feel like they got gypped. Of course if prices are declining as they were during the last SO reval, it is the people who got assessed first who are mad. And as Mr. Rosen pointed out, in that case they can appeal their assessments as too high, causing revenue problems for the town. The long and short of it is that a reval is a huge undertaking that is bound to make a lot of people unhappy, and so most towns try to put it off as long as possible. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 451 Registered: 3-2003 |
This problem seems to be greatest in Essex County, probably because it did take Newark 40 years to do a reval. I have a house in Monmouth County and have had four revaluations since 1987. The fact of the matter is that they can be without a lot of fuss if they're done right. And by done right it probably means educating people about revaluations, especially since we have so many new people in town. My recollection, based on some information supplied in another thread dealing with Map-lewood, is that South Orange's assessments are more out of line that any other municipality in Essex County. As I said above, most towns in counties other than Essex seem to be able to do it on a regular basis. In some cases, the County Board of Taxation asks a town to do a reval but even then it's done without a fuss. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 452 Registered: 3-2003 |
I have to say that with my other house, the biggest problem was with the 1987 revaluation. In that case, there hadn't been a reval for over 20 years, and then came the 1987 stock market crash. It was because of this that there have been more frequent revaluations, whether initiated by the municipality or the county. It smooths things out a lot. This is probably a lesson learned by Maplewood and should have been a lesson learned by South Orange. | ||
| woodstock Citizen Username: Woodstock Post Number: 521 Registered: 9-2002  |
I, like doublea, am one of the homeowners in SO that is reasonably sure a reval would lower my taxes. But as he has said many times, it's the inequity, rather than the actual assessment value, that offends me. Even if my taxes did not go down a significant amount, I could take comfort knowing that I am not subsidizing my neighbors. I'm a reasonably charitable guy, but there are limits. I would imagine that if revals were done more frequently, they would not be so expensive. The estimates I saw for a reval of SO were in the $400-600k range. That was after only 12 years. I could imagine (and I just hypothesizing here) that a reval every five years, when the changes in home prices would not be as exhorbitant, might be significantly less costly. I would guess (again, hedging) that more frequent revals would be less costly, overall, than less frequent ones where home values get so out of whack. To bobk: Thanks for setting me straight on what happened in Maplewood. From reading the posts about it, I was unclear when the tax increase was phased in. Waiting For The Electrician, Or Someone Like Him | ||
| sac Citizen Username: Sac Post Number: 948 Registered: 5-2001 |
What happened to the software and process that supposedly came with Maplewood's reval to allow the township officials (tax assessor?) to monitor and regularly adjust assessments according to market trends. Judging from the fact that my assessment hasn't budged and now is quite a ways off from the prices I see being realized in my neighborhood, it doesn't seem that this is being used. Anyone know what happened with that? | ||
| bobk Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 4645 Registered: 5-2001 |
The MW reval contract was around $250,000 although subsequent events such as the assessor review process and the law suit undoubtedly increased that. I believe MW has more structures than SOP. Sac, politics I think. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 454 Registered: 3-2003 |
In the list of house sales in today's Star-Ledger, 243 Irving Ave. was sold for $950,000. I know I can get the assessment in Village Hall, but can anyone get it online? | ||
| bobk Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 4651 Registered: 5-2001 |
Doublea, here is a source for sales information including assessed values. The house you mention doesn't seem to be online yet. Go to Home Price Check to the right of the screen http://www.domania.com/ Bob said, "have fun" as he tossed the matches and the gasoline to the children" ;) | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 455 Registered: 3-2003 |
Thanks. You old devil you. |
