SOUTH RIVER – The South River Borough Council served as the host to a presentation to inform residents about upcoming property revaluations that will be completed by Realty Appraisal Company.
Real estate appraiser Neil Rubenstein said the New Jersey Division of Taxation ordered South River and many other municipalities throughout the state to revise their property assessment values, conduct a revaluation and reset the tax base.
“Our firm is the oldest firm in New Jersey. We have done over 450 revaluations solely in the state, including the last revaluation that was done in this town in 1985, 33 years ago. The town has not had a revaluation since then. The assessments that were established back then, they sat basically for that period of time,” Rubenstein said.
More than 90 residents attended the presentation by Rubenstein and Realty Appraisal Company Manager Brandon Sherwood on May 14 during the council meeting.
“Who dropped the ball? It is not the municipality, [it was] the county and the state. The state does an annual study each year of all of the sales that took place at any given municipality and they look at the assessments of those properties that sold and they calculate a ratio,” Rubenstein said. “The order for a revaluation comes from the county, not the municipality.”
Rubenstein said representatives of the company started canvasing the borough a month ago and will be going door to door to inspect the interior and exterior of every home and business. He said the goal is to establish each property’s fair market value, meaning what each house is worth if the owner wanted to sell his/her home/land, what is it worth on Oct. 1.
“Another big misconception is that this is being done to raise everyone’s taxes. That is not the case. … A revaluation is revenue neutral. What that means is that if we raise somebody’s property $10 in taxes, somewhere else in town somebody is going down $10. At the end of the day, the budgets are the budgets. … The assessments are one of the pieces that calculate the tax rate,” Rubenstein said.
Rubenstein continued, “The total assessments [and] the total budgets encapsulate the tax rate. When we finish the revaluation there will be properties that go up in taxes [and] there will be properties that go down in taxes and typically there is a percentage of the town that stays about the same.”
As of this time, all residents should have received a letter from the company and the borough’s tax assessor briefly explaining the inspection process, according to Rubenstein.
“The inspection is fairly quick. The interior is the quickest part. On the exterior we have to measure every property. As a byproduct of not having a revaluation in 33 years, there is not data,” Rubenstein said. “[For] a lot of revaluations in the state, sometimes there are existing sketches of the properties, or some data we use in the process; (here), there is absolutely nothing. So we are going to measure physically every property in town and we are going to inspect the interior hopefully of every property.”
On the outside of a property, Rubenstein said the inspector will collect data on anything that can translate into value, including detached ovens, detached garages, in-ground swimming pools and patios.
Each inspection should take between three to five minutes. The inspector will not take any photos inside a property unless requested to do so by the resident. The state requires the inspector to take a photo of the front and rear of the property from outside, according to Rubenstein.
Rubenstein said each of the company’s inspectors carries two forms of identification, one of which was issued by the South River Police Department. The identification includes a photo of every inspector so that if an inspector comes to a resident’s property, he/she can be verified.
According to council President Shawn Haussermann, the borough’s website has a photo of each inspector, along with their name, a description of their car and their car’s license plate number.
“Make sure you ask for [identification] and that you do not let anyone into your home that can’t provide this identification. In addition to carrying the identification, their photograph and core description is registered with the assessor and the police department, so anybody can be verified,” Rubenstein said.
Each inspector will carry a tablet to collect data, instead of papers, pens or clipboards. Inspectors will be wearing a neon vest, according to Rubenstein.
While the inspector is at each house, Rubenstein said property owners are welcome to inform the inspector about anything unique regarding their house. The inspector will make a note and the assessor will consider it when doing the appraisal.
“The field inspector who comes to your home, a common misconception is that he or she is doing the appraisal; that is not the case. That person is collecting the data for your home [and] the appraisals are done via appraisers in our office with that collected data. What we are doing is called mass appraisal,” Rubenstein said.
If a resident is not home or does not want to let the inspector in due to being sick or dealing with an emergency, Rubenstein said the inspector will leave a company contact card and the resident can schedule an inspection.
“Right now we are in one area of town. We may not be to the other areas for three or four months or longer. It does not matter when (we) inspect your property, the … appraisal date for every property in the borough is Oct. 1, 2018,” Rubenstein said.
Rubenstein said there is no law which states a resident has to let the inspector in, however, if residents want an accurate assessment of their property he said it would be much quicker to let the inspector in to collect the data.
“If we don’t gain entrance to the property … we have to estimate what’s inside the home. It takes much more to calculate or guess standing outside the house what is in every home vs. being allowed in to see the condition. We are looking at the kitchen, the bathrooms, the basement, the attic and doing a full interior inspection. We are using that data to rate your house,” Rubenstein said.
Once all of the assessments are complete, the company will mail every resident a notification letter with the proposed new property assessment value. If a resident disagrees with his/her new assessment, he/she can make an appointment to attend an informal taxpayers hearing with the company to discuss their property and review property records, according to Rubenstein.
Rubenstein said after all the informal taxpayer hearings have taken place, the new assessments will be certified, however, if a resident still disagrees with their new property assessment value, he/she can file an appeal with the Middlesex County Board of Taxation.
Residents expressed concerns pertaining to when they can expect an inspector to come and inspect their property.
Rubenstein said the company will create a system to put out information on the borough’s website or the company’s website to let residents know what area of South River its inspector(s) will be in on certain dates.
“In a revaluation, we are simply doing one thing … [reassessing] every property in town before that particular date to redistribute the tax revenue to balance the playing field,” Rubenstein said.
For more information, visit www.southrivernj.org/revaluation/.
Contact Vashti Harris at [email protected].