WPCNR QUILL & EYESHADE. By John F. Bailey. January 27, 2009 UPDATED 11:40 A.M. E.S.T.: The White Plains Board of Assessment Review will have its hands full the next month evaluating property tax grievances, more than half by commercial properties, filed last week by residential and commercial property owners in White Plains.
Lloyd Tasch, the City Assessor reported that grievances filed with the Assessor’s Office over this year’s assessments totaled 858 properties. He said last year 500 grievances were filed, of which 179 were residential. This year, of the 858 grievances about 450 were residencial homeowners, and the rest commercial.
Tasch said the residential cases would be decided by February 27, but anticipated the remaining 450 commerical properties could be contested in court and affect the 2010 tax roll.
Tasch said the three-person Board of Assessment Review would handle the unprecedented number of grievances “as best they can,” meeting in the afternoons each day and “going to whatever it takes.” The Board, he said, gives three types of rulings, a reduction; a denial in which the owner has not proven their case, which can be appealed to the court.
Tasch declined to estimate how much the residential cases would impact the current assessment role, which as of this moment is sitting on $288.4 Million for 2009, down from $291.8 Million in 2008. He attributed the increase in residential grievances to the decline in real estate prices in the city. He said the residential grievance effect on the assessment roll “would take it down some.” He said the commercial property grievance effect would hit the assessment roll next year. Mr. Tasch said it would be premature to put a figure on how much the assessment roll would decline.
The figures were released coincidently at a time when the Multiple Listing Service statistics showed that the Westchester price of a median home had declined to $570,000, a decline of 10.9% in one year. In White Plains, real estate statistics show the price of a median home in White Plains has declined to about $610,000 as of November.
It should be noted that the median price statistic decline is misleading and what it shows is that high-end homes priced above the median are selling for less money, driving down the median price, which would naturally lead homeowners to conclude they might be over-assessed.
The Mean Sale Price in Westchester County of a One-Family Home (the average sale price) was $745,127 at the close of the 4th Quarter according to the Multiple Listing Service website, they analyze this decline as reflecting substantial price cutting in the upper end of the westchester market:
"The Westchester single family house median was $570,000, down 11% or $70,000 from the
fourth quarter of 2007. The year over year percentage decreases for condos and co-ops
were 7% and 3% respectively. Mean sale prices were down by even larger percentages,
indicating that there was proportionately more price cutting and less activity at the high end.
The proportion of million dollar sales in the fourth quarter of 2008 was only 15% in
comparison to 18% in the fourth quarter of 2007."
Note: Updates to stories are printed in italics.
