Assessment goes down and back up. Why?

[micky]

I was just trying to find out the full name of someone who owns a house in New Jersey and I ended up seeing the property tax records for that address, and one of things it had was that the assessment for the land went down from 200,000 to 100,000 in 2010 and didn't go back up until

2017. Actually 188,000 to 88,000 then up to 209,000.

The building assesment went down from 320k to 300 and then up to 400 in

2017. Actually 326K to 299, then up to 391.

I thought that was all strange, but ... If the street leading to his home was all torn up for sewer pipe replacements or something like that, and they had to park a block or two away and carry everything from there, and it took years and years to do, would that account for all those changes? Street repairs seem to take forever.

[Ed P]

Assessment is often a percentage of market value so if the overall market changed they may have changed along with it. Just a matter of changing a number in the computer.

The taxes may or may not have changed. There is a lot of confusion there. If the assessment goes up and the mil rate goes down, you may be paying the same amount of taxes.

I know what our town did. Step 1 was make a budget. If the budget went up 5% the mil rate followed. One year they changed the value on commercial properties and the residents screamed about it. Well, until they found their tax actually went down a tiny bit.