I am writing in response to the recent letter to the editor from Monmouth County Freeholder Thomas A. Arnone. I am a victim of the new property tax assessment law, better known as the law to make people unable to successfully file and win tax appeals, which Mr. Arnone helped to put into place last year.
My new increased assessment is now costing me over $1,000 a year more in property taxes. Basically, the tax assessor in Howell recently increased the assessment for many of the properties in my area by a fixed amount: $40,000. In other parts of the town, this increase was in fixed increments of $10,000 or $20,000.
This increment was small enough so that if the homeowners appealed their taxes, they could not win the appeal in tax court.
He did this kind of reassessment for most but not all of the properties near me and only some of the properties in other parts of town. The best information I have is that about 20 percent of the properties in Howell had this kind of incremental increase or decrease, while 80 percent of the homes had no increase or decrease in tax assessment.
How can it be that each home’s value was increased or decreased by the same fixed amount? The houses on my block are all different and were built by different builders over a 15-year period. They are not condos, which are identical and can be reassessed in this manner. How can these increased or decreased assessments only be applied to a percentage of the homes in Howell when the whole real estate market went up in value? This is what makes this reassessment so unfair.
I believe it is statistically impossible for only some people’s property tax assessment to go up by some arbitrary fixed amount and still have the property tax assessment be at true market value as required by law. About 1,000 homes had a decrease in assessment, while about 3,500 had an increase and about 2,000 homes had no increase or decrease. In Howell, there are about 25,000 homes. The assessor has an overwhelming task before him. How can he do this reassessment each year fairly and accurately?
In my case, houses near me that are assessed at around $700,000 went up $40,000, and my house that was assessed at $346,000 goes up $40,000. My house increased by about 12 percent and others only 6 percent. The real estate market may have gone up, but it was a percentage increase across the board, not a fixed amount like these increases.
It is also clear that the $700,000 houses were very different from mine, yet we both went up $40,000. It also looks like last year was a bubble market and the price increases are not holding. It is also part of New Jersey law that reassessments are not done on bubble markets or overheated markets. All of Howell was reassessed by a professional tax assessment company only one year ago. That is what makes this reassessment so egregious.
Were the professionals that far off? This new law conflicts with current law as far as property reassessment appeals are handled by tax assessors and the tax appeal court.
The property owner will always lose in court and will have no recourse because the tax court assumes the assessment is correct if the assessment is within plus-or-minus 15 percent of “true market value.”
The practical effect of the new law allows the assessors to arbitrarily and improperly increase assessments on some people by up to, but less than 15 percent over, the true market value. The homeowner will then have no recourse in tax court because, under current law, this assessment will be deemed correct, and the owner will then pay thousands of dollars more than his fair share of taxes as compared to the other 80 percent of the town that saw no increase or decrease in assessment. Philip DiMarco Howell