Happy New Year from your friends at Maidenbaum! January is here, which means it’s time to start filing Nassau County property tax grievances. Think of the next two months as a precious window of opportunity to challenge your property tax assessment beginning on 01/03/23 and ending on 04/03/23.
It’s a brand-new year and far too early to tell what 2023 will bring us here in Nassau County. Will residential real estate values continue to rise as they’ve done since 2020, or will they stabilize and possibly even crater? Will inflation rates and mortgage rates moderate or will they spike? Is the world really done with COVID or will new variants (or completely new diseases) cause additional macroeconomic damage?
While it’s impossible to answer these questions now, here’s what we know: whatever is in store for us this year, it will continue to be a wise decision to challenge your residential property tax assessment in 2023.
Here’s Why:
Assessment Errors Will Continue to Exist
The simple reality is that the Nassau County Department of Assessment can often be incorrect in their assessment of your home. If you’ve been following the news this year, you’ve likely noticed a lot of stories about assessment values being seriously out-of-whack and taxpayers being entitled to assessment reductions leading to potential refunds. As recently as October 2022, abnormal errors caused the Nassau County Legislature to take action, approving corrections to some 842 property tax bills after the Department of Assessment admitted that the tax increases to these properties were mathematically inaccurate.
Errors in the assessment process are more common than they should be, and they can crop up for many different reasons. The burden is on you (or your representative, if you choose Maidenbaum to represent you), to catch these errors and attempt to correct them so that your assessment isn’t artificially inflated. Challenging your assessment gives you a chance to correct these errors, and we recommend that you challenge each and every year. Why? Because it may take yearly grievances to bring your assessment in line with reality so that you don’t overpay. Even if you don’t receive a reduction for one year, you could very well get one for the successive year.
School Taxes Will Continue to Rise
School taxes — which constitute the better part of your overall property tax bill — are practically guaranteed to rise this year. Unless and until the County takes steps to rationalize its sprawling education system in a way that preserves quality education while paring away costly redundancies, rising school tax bills just have to be accepted as inevitable realities in Nassau County.
Challenging Your Assessment Pays and It’s Risk-Free
Residential property tax grievances are effective. After a detailed look at County tax data, Newsday recently reported that nearly three-quarters of Nassau County homeowners who filed property tax grievances received reductions for 2022-23. That’s quite an objective endorsement of the efficacy of challenging one’s assessment. Furthermore, there’s no downside risk to challenging your assessment. Unlike some other states, in New York State there is zero chance that your assessment will increase as a result of your challenge.
Maidenbaum Makes Grieving Easy
Filing a grievance in Nassau County is a savvy maneuver for any homeowner, and Maidenbaum has a long history of success representing taxpayers in your situation. For more than 30 years we’ve been helping tax-stressed Nassau County homeowners reduce their tax burden to the maximum allowed by law, saving them millions of dollars.
We sincerely hope that you’ll choose Maidenbaum to represent you for the 2024/25 tax year. Remember, there’s absolutely no risk to you: even if your property is accurately assessed, and no reduction is warranted, there’s no fee to you (if your matter happens to go to SCAR (Small Claims Assessment Review), the court-imposed filing fee is just $30). If you’d like to sign up or simply learn more about how the process works, please contact us today via our website or by phone at 516-336-8622.