applying for property tax reduction

You are probably too late to contest last year's assessment of your home. I believe (and you should check the Department of Finance website to make usre) that the window for this is between the tentative assessment, which they do in the winter, and the final assessment, which they do later in the spring. They will reassess this winter and presumably assessments will be lower.

However, you should know that since most people are being taxed at less than their assessed values, even a drop in assessment is unlikely to lower your taxes. Class 1 homes (1,2, and 3-family) are supposed to be assessed at 6 percent of market value. The average is probably about 3. So, let's say your house is worth a million and your target assessed value is $60,000. However, your actual assessment is something like $30,000 because of caps on how much assessments can increase from one year to the next. Let's suppose your market value falls to $800,000, and your target assessment falls to $48,000. However, your actual assessment can still rise to about $32,000.

This is part of the wild and wacky world of NYC property tax law.

Posted by: Back40 at November 9, 2008 4:20 PM