nothin East Rock Braces For Reval Sticker Shock | New Haven Independent

East Rock Braces For Reval Sticker Shock

Melissa Bailey File Photo

Gary Matican and Marcus Anderson of Vision Appraisal inspect homes on Ella Grasso Boulevard.

As the city prepares to mail once-in-a-decade property revaluations to homeowners, a state legislator warned the notices could have a devastating effect” on East Rock.

State Rep. Roland Lemar, an East Rock homeowner himself, made that prediction in an interview this week. The neighborhood’s alderman offered a similar take. Their prediction echoed an observation by Barbara Pearce, whose company sells real estate throughout the region and has seen East Rock defy the trend of plunging prices.

Lemar was talking about the revaluation of city property, now mandated by the state every five years.

The city hired Vision Appraisal, a private appraisal firm, to reassess all city properties for the purpose of establishing the grand list, on which taxes are based. Appraisers could be spotted this year standing in yards to inspect homes — and for the first time in over 30 years, asking to go inside for an internal evaluation. (Those inspections took place only with homeowners’ consent.)

The revaluation will be the most thorough the city has seen in decades. The last revaluation, in 2006, did not require a physical inspection of each property except upon request by the homeowner. The values were based instead on market analysis. The last time appraisers did an exterior visual observation” of all properties was in 2001, according to mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton. Interior inspections were not required in the past three revaluations in 2006, 2001, and 1991 — and the city doesn’t know if they took place in the next revaluation before that, in 1978.

Now a new state law is requiring cities to conduct property revaluations every five years, with a physical interior inspection every 10 years.

In the wake of a global recession, Realtors, taxpayers and city budget-makers are now waiting nervously to see how appraisers think the city’s property values fared. Revaluations tend to produce outrage, as well as much confusion, as people receive their adjusted values.

The new assessments will go out in the mail by the end of this week, said Mayor John DeStefano. That means they will arrive in homes a few days later. DeStefano said he aims to speak at a public meeting on Thursday of next week to address the topic and give an analysis of the impact of the revaluations on the city.

DeStefano declined Tuesday to say how the appraisals will affect different neighborhoods or property types. He said his focus in the revaluations — and whether to phase them in — will be fairness and equity.”

The revaluation will have broader implications on the city budget, he said — about how we compensate our workforce, and how we run the government.” It will bring to the forefront questions such as, Should we be tax subsidizing affordable housing units at the expense of other neighborhoods?”

Meanwhile, East Rockers have been bracing for the news.

The new revaluation will be based on housing sales from October 2009 to October 2011, DeStefano said.

Lemar said that in recent years, housing sales in East Rock have stayed stable, while the rest of the city has seen values deflate. East Rock has been largely free of the large number of foreclosures that have swept across the city.

That’s not bad news for East Rock — except when it comes to tax time. If values in East Rock remain stable” while values in other neighborhoods go down, there’s going to be a disparate impact on East Rock homeowners,” Lemar said.

East Rock is going to see a devastating impact,” he predicted.

Barbara Pearce, who runs H. Pearce Real Estate, backed up that hypothesis. She said her company reached a similar conclusion after looking through home sales in the past two years in the 15 towns in greater New Haven where it sells homes.

If you look over the past couple of years, we found two places where housing values did not go down in the region — Spring Glen [in Hamden] and East Rock.”

Pearce said home sales slowed after the spring of 2011, with 25 percent fewer homes sold in New Haven in the third quarter of 2011 compared to 2010. Because sales slowed, H. Pearce dropped the prices on some East Rock homes.

But as a general observation, she said, Lemar’s analysis is true: East Rock held its value” while the rest of the city did not.

If that observation is reflected in the revaluations, it will shift the tax burden from other neighborhoods to East Rock. The city would need to boost the tax rate to raise the same amount of revenue, causing an increase in East Rockers’ tax bills.

That’s not a good situation, Lemar said.

I just don’t think East Rock homeowners can handle a tax hike at this time.”

If taxes rise in East Rock in an already soft economy, homebuyers might choose other neighborhoods to live in, Pearce said. Home sales in East Rock will also depend heavily on the number of new hires at Yale and at the Smilow Cancer Center. New hires at Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital make up the majority of homebuyers in East Rock, she said.

East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker echoed Lemar’s concerns.

I think we’ll have an increase in taxes” — because home values will stay flat while much of the rest of the city’s property values will go down.”

The problem may not be contained to East Rock, of course.

Westville Alderman Greg Dildine said he expects the values in his neighborhood to be on par with the basis for the last tax bill. By that he means the partial phase-in of the 2006 revaluation, which was frozen in its second year of implementation (at 40 percent of the difference between the 2001 and 2006 revaluations).

Values have been frozen at that level with state permission because of the huge impact the last revaluation was set to have on homeowners. In the last revaluation in 2006, home values shot up while commercial values went down, shifting the tax burden to residential properties.

Elicker said in advance of the new notices, he is focusing on educating East Rock on homeowners’ rights.

When homeowners get their new assessments, they should check them carefully for any mistakes. Mistakes can be brought to the assessor’s office, then sent to the Board of Assessment Appeals, then finally to Superior Court for redress.

Of course, that solution is not likely to bail out an entire neighborhood staring at a tax hike.

Beyond arguing down a specific assessment, Lemar suggested homeowners can focus on the city budget process, and empower your alderman to get good value for your dollar.”

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