Revaluation Pains

From the News Transcript:

Impact of reval will become clear in 07

The recently completed property revaluation of 14,720 taxable properties in Manalapan resulted in 700 property owners requesting an appeal of the new assessment they received.

Manalapan Tax Assessor Sharon Hartman said informal hearings for these appeals were conducted from Nov. 1 through Nov. 30. She said a letter will be going out to each resident who appealed in order to apprise them of the final decision and the final new assessment on their property.

Hartman said any reduction in the initial assessment would be the result of officials looking at all of the properties surrounding any individual appeal and any reduction would be made for the whole neighborhood and not just the individual who appealed.

Manalapan�s last revaluation was in 1991.

Monmouth County Tax Administrator Matthew S. Clark has explained that revaluations are necessary to ensure parity among all taxpayers, meaning the tax burden is evenly distributed among 100 percent of the tax base.
…
Hartman acknowledged that the taxes paid on some properties will increase, the taxes paid on some properties will decrease and the taxes paid on some properties will remain about the same.

She said when all is said and done, it could turn out that an individual who paid between $800,000 and $1 million for a new home in the past year could see his property tax bill decrease if his home�s value had not been �raised significantly� during the revaluation process.

�The purpose of the reval is to redistribute the amount of taxes collected � to distribute them fairly,� Hartman said.

Using Hartman�s projection of Manalapan�s overall tax rate being cut in half as a result of the revaluation (from $3.69 to about $1.85 per $100 of assessed valuation), the owner of a home that was previously assessed at $200,000 and is now assessed at $500,000 would see an increase in his total property tax from $7,380 to $9,250.

The owner of a home that was previously assessed at $800,000 and is now assessed at $1 million would see a decrease in his total property tax from $29,520 to $18,500.

From the Asbury Park Press:

APPEAL A PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENT

hinking about appealing your property tax assessment? First, experts and tax officers say, study or consult on the rules, think it through again, then decide what to do.

Mike and Betty Palermo of Webb Avenue in the Ocean Grove section of Neptune considered appealing their assessment early in 2004. Neptune had just gone through its first revaluation in 14 years, and the Palermos’ residence skyrocketed in taxable value from $135,800 to $448,000, or 330 percent, with their property taxes soaring accordingly.

“We hired a private assessor, for about $100, to come down and study our property, and to let us know how fair or unfair the township’s assessment was,” said Mike Palermo, 81. “He said if we sold the house, we would get at least what the township assessed it at. He said an appeal, therefore, would be disastrous. The tax increase is tough, but we don’t want to move. We did not appeal. We bit the bullet.”

Yehuda Shain, a Lakewood real estate broker, is also a state-certified tax assessor. He said he has assisted hundreds of people in deciding whether they should appeal.

“Most people who appeal do not succeed because they did not have the grounds to appeal,” Shain said. “Some people think that because their taxes are high, and they can not afford to pay, that they can appeal to the tax board. But such an argument carries no weight at all.”

Tax officials in Monmouth and Ocean counties agree that many people do not understand what an assessment appeal involves, and often appeal when, if they had done some preliminary research, they would not have wasted their time and money.

“Many appeals are filed that have no chance of succeeding, and the filing fee is lost,” said Matthew Clark, tax administrator for Monmouth County.