Higher home values may lead to higher assessments

ELIZABETHTOWN | With North Country housing prices soaring, another shoe is about to drop in the form of tax assessments, which could be up by double digits, something that hasn't happened in 20 years, according to Essex County officials. Because the public tends to react poorly to higher assessments, especially if they come as a surprise, Essex County supervisors are considering a series of town meetings warning property owners to brace themselves, and also assure them that their taxes will not be going up by a corresponding amount. Higher assessments do not necessarily translate into higher taxes, because when the assessed value goes up the tax rate typically comes down — assuming the local government is collecting roughly the same amount of money as it did the previous year. But the formula isn't quite that simple, and supervisors at their July 19 meeting asked for a briefing on the process during an upcoming meeting. "It gets very complicated very fast," said Ticonderoga Supervisor Joe Giordano. State projections are for a 10% increase in assessed value, an eye-opening number considering that 4% or 5% is considered to be a sizable jump, said Dave Wainwright, director of real property tax services for Essex County. "I've never seen anything like this in 14 years, nothing even close," Wainwright said. According to the Adirondack-Champlain Valley Multiple Listing Service, month-over-month median sales prices in the North Country have been up by as much as 52% over the past year. The market remained strong in May, the last month data was available for, with prices up more than 27% from May 2020. The ACVMLS sheets tell a dual story of prices going up and inventory going down. The median sales price in Essex County in May was $335,000 in Essex County. Meanwhile, the number of homes on the market plunged from 307 in May 2020 to 171 in May 2021. Supervisors meanwhile believe it's a bad omen for local people trying to buy a home. A house is expensive enough and the taxes are too, meaning that properties are becoming the exclusive purview of second-home owners, retirees, and people with jobs outside the park who can work remotely. "People are offering $20,000 over asking price sight unseen," said Newcomb Supervisor Robin DeLoria. "Fair market value is based on what? It's not local money." The state does a back-of-the-envelope calculation in the summer and projects what the trend in valuation will be. Then, armed with a mountain of real-world data that includes sales prices, it formalizes those numbers in the winter, Wainwright said. If a town's assessment begins to lag what the state believes it should be by more than 5%, towns will need to play catch-up. Those that have done recent revaluations, such as Jay, North Elba, and Chesterfield, "should be in pretty good shape," Wainwright said, while those that haven't been revalued in a while might not. Moriah Supervisor Tom Scozzafava said that Covid-related home sales may represent a bubble and that it's unfair for the state to judge home values based on sales over the past year. "These are extraordinary times; people trying to get out of the more populated areas and come up here," he said. "The people living in this county are not going to be able to afford houses. I don't think it's fair for the state to base equalization rates on 2020 and 2021. I think it's insane." Wainwright said that while predicting the real estate market is speculative, upticks in housing prices tend to become the new normal. "I wouldn't think (the market) would go back down to pre-Covid levels, but who's to say," he said.

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Higher home values may lead to higher assessments

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