Find out what your property is assessed for

by susan on November 30, 2009

At their meeting on Tuesday night, selectmen will vote on the property tax rate for FY2010. The tax rate is one half of the equation that determines how much you pay in property taxes each year. The other half of the equation is your home’s valuation.

The Assessors Office recently completed the proposed property valuations for fiscal year 2010. Valuations are based on an analysis of sales and market conditions in calendar year 2008, and reflect your property’s value as of January 1, 2009.

The sluggish market conditions we’ve seen in calendar year 2009 won’t be reflected in your property valuation until next year (fiscal year 2011).

You can find out what your property was assessed for by looking at the FY2010 assessments (pdf). Compare the valuation to last year by looking at the FY2009 assessments (pdf).

If you think your property is overvalued or disproportionately assessed in comparison to other properties, you can file an abatement. You’ll find more information and the necessary forms on the Town Assessors’ website. The filing deadline is February 1, 2010.

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Chris November 30, 2009 at 1:04 PM: Anyone have a key to the use numbers in the far right hand column? e.g. 101, 102, etc.

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2 susan November 30, 2009 at 3:51 PM: Chris – good question. I checked with Principal Assessor Paul Cibelli, and here’s what he told me:

Use code is how assessors classify property (or describe a property) under department of revenue guidelines. Property classification codes are uniform throughout the State. 100 class is residential use, 300 class is commercial use, 400 class is industrial use, 500 class is personal property use. Each class is than further broken down. For example under the residential class, 101 is a single family home, 102 is a condo, 104 is a two family, 105 is a three family, 130 is residential vacant land and so on….again, they all start with the 100 code which denotes some type of residential use. Commercial, Industrial, personal property work the same way. For instance commercial office building is use code 340, retail store is 325, gas station is a 334…

…sooooo what’s all this mean to the average person???… not much…. To the Assessors the use code is important in developing assessments. We need to be able group similar type properties for various types of sales analysis and use code allow us to extract and sort data that is of similar use from our database. Use code also comes into play if the Selectmen opt for a split tax rate. The use code of a property would determine if its taxed at the commercial/Industrial rate or residential rate.

So now you know!

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3 Chris December 1, 2009 at 8:02 AM: thanks for the follow-up!

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