Many of us took advantage of the informal consultations offered by Vision Appraisal Technologies to review our recent assessment revaluations back in December. If you weren’t able to schedule a hearing or weren’t satisfied with the result, you have another opportunity to appeal your assessment to the Town’s Board of Assessment Appeals in March. To file an appeal, you must fill out a form, available at the Town Assessor’s office, and file it by March 20. The Assessor will then assign a date for your appeal hearing with the Board of Assessment Appeals.

On the form you will identify the owner and address of the property, reason for the appeal and the estimated value of the proposed changes. If it is not possible to file the appeal yourself, you may appoint a friend or representative to do it for you. The process itself is not difficult but does require some research to compare assessed values or actual sales of similar properties.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1. Get a copy of your property record from the Town Assessor.
2. Examine the record and verify the items and features for which you are being assessed. Items such as lot size, square footage of your buildings, year they were built, features such as fireplaces, Jacuzzi’s, etc., may not be accurate. Even if your property record was accurate before the revaluation, you may find, like I did, that is no longer the case. Vision Technologies made changes to all property records and some mistakes were made in the process. If you find errors, the Assessor can usually correct the property record without going through the appeal process. Some of these items like building square footage or age of the structure can have a big impact on your valuation.
3. There are other factors that are more subjective, i.e., topography or road accessibility, that are used by the assessor to establish the value of the land portion of your property assessment. Unless there is an obvious misjudgment by the assessor, you will have to file a formal appeal to challenge these assumptions. The assessor uses a variable built into the land record called the “Condition Factor” to reflect these nuances. Most of us have been assigned a C Factor of 1.0, which assumes a typical, gently sloping, accessible piece of lake property. If you have been assigned a 1.0 and have something other than a level, accessible piece of property, then the Appeal Board has the latitude to lower your land assessment, provided you supply evidence to support your case, i.e., similar properties that have been discounted with lower C factors. Photos are helpful. With the current revaluation, Vision has introduced a series of “special pricing factors” that increase valuations on some properties observed (by Vision) to have nice views. You may well feel your view classification as judged by Vision doesn’t match up to similar properties and is worthy of a challenge. See my other article – “Revaluation 2007 - Progress Report and Preliminary Results” - for further discussion on view classifications.

For more information on this subject I would recommend checking out a couple of websites. The National Taxpayers Union (www.ntu.org) has lots of useful information and has produced a brochure, “How to Fight Your Property Taxes,” which can be ordered on the website. Another website I found useful is www.goodadvicepress.com. It has a writeup under the heading “Fighting the Good Fight” that has several useful tips on tackling your tax assessment.