Property Tax Grievance

Last week my husband and I were lucky enough to file a grievance with the Town Assessor to reduce our property taxes. We had received a deluge of mail from many law firms and agencies offering to file on our behalf. In return the typical fee is 50% of your 1st year tax savings plus any appraisal fees if required. Of course, if your taxes are not reduced then you pay nothing. It is a win-win situation since you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. My husband thought it was a great idea and that we should sign up with one of these firms. I figured that I should research the matter and do it myself since that’s the type of person I am. Somehow, I had the date of May 20, 2008 in my head. It was the deadline stated on all of these offers. On May 19, I finally got around to my research only to find that May 20, 2008 was the absolute deadline for filing with my Town and that the grievance period began on May 1st. Great! I had no choice but to show up the next day and take my chances with the process.

I arrived in the rain with great trepidation because I was unprepared. Also, because it was the last day, I had no chance to fix any issues that may arise. I was pleasantly surprised. For all of the typical complaining about government employees, those at my Town Assessor’s office were stellar. Though the line got long at times, they patiently helped everyone along who needed it. If you couldn’t grasp the computer, if you couldn’t fill out the application, if you couldn’t grasp one single iota of the process, it did not matter. The Assessor’s office helped you with everything. It was incredible. Even when the waiting line for the computers got too long, residents were led to the back office to use the employees’ personal computers.

Luckily, I found the process to be simple. First, you are given an application and led to a computer to look up your address to get your tax id# (if you didn’t bring your tax statement with you) and your assessed valuation. The assessed valuation is the multiplier used to calculate the dollar amount of taxes owed. Using the valuation, the
assessed value (the current market value as deemed by the Assessor) of your property is calculated. I couldn’t believe the amount that my house was assessed, close to $100,000 more than I thought is was worth. This was a good sign that I might have a case. In my town, you also received a list of all the sales of homes in your zip code during the past year. It was your job to find 3 comps, 3 homes as similar to yours as you can find in your neighborhood that sold for less than the amount your home is currently valued by the Town Assessor. The same process an appraiser uses to qualify the value of your home. You were given the opportunity to use the computer again to verify the 3 homes you had chosen to get additional details to complete the application. You could also attach a recent copy of an appraisal if you had one. The final step was for you to value your home based on the comps that you picked and that was it.

Your application then goes to the Assessment Review Board for approval. I was concerned that some of the comps that I picked had higher assessed valuations than my house. However, the state of New York sets the rules for property tax grievance. Only the current market value of your home and other homes in the area can be used to determine if your house is overvalued. I hope that I am approved for this year. It will be a great help. If not, I will definitely try again next year. I couldn’t believe that there were so many firms and agencies making so much money for a process that was so simple, at least in my town.