THE TAX ASSESSOR'S ROLE IN DETERMINING MARKET VALUE

New York State Law requires all properties in each municipality to be assessed at a uniform percentage of market value each year. This means that all properties in each city, town, or village must be assessed at market value or all at the same uniform percentage of market value each year. Your assessor may use mass appraisal techniques, real estate market trends, the sales comparison, as well as other approaches to value to arrive at a property's estimated market value, which is available on the assessment roll.

Once the market value of each property is determined, the assessor applies the municipal-wide level of assessment to the market values.In many communities, where assessments are maintained at a level of assessment of 100, a property's assessment is the assessor's estimate of its market value. If a community is assessing at a percentage of market value, each assessment should be based upon the percentage being used throughout the community. For instance, if the market value of a property is $100,000, and the community is assessing at 30 percent of market value, the assessment should be $30,000.

If one determines the market value of his or her property and feels that the assessor's estimate of market value (upon which the assessment is based) is too high, then the property owner should contact the assessor's office to learn the procedures for informal assessment review. During the informal review process, the property owner and the assessor can each discuss the property's inventory (or characteristics) and how the market value estimates were determined. If the property owner remains unsatisfied with the assessment, he or she has the right to formal administrative and judicial review of the assessment. The assessor can provide the property owner with information on these processes.

Information from NYS Office of Real Property Services