A Dirty Little Secret

Hi Everyone:

Just this week I learned of a dirty little secret regarding Westchester County, New York's assessment practices.

One's property assessment is the basis for the school, town, county and/or village or city taxes. Obviously the lower the assessment, the lower the taxes will be. So one would think that the assessments are or should be based on fair market value. Not so in Westchester County. The appraisals of condos and co-ops are based on 50% of their market value. Why I do not know. That means that one and two family houses are actually subsidizing the condos and co-ops with higher taxes to make up for the 50% shortfall.

I do not know how long this practice has been going on, but I'm pretty sure that it has happening for a while. I have two problems with this obviously unfair practice. The first is that it does not make common sense to appraise condos and co-ops at 50% and secondly, where is the fairness with this practice? If I owned a home in Westchester County I would raise hell about this. What does this practice do other then put more of a financial strain on the owners of one and two family homes? Why do this in the first place? I would suspect that politicians were definitely involved for some type of political gain. Why else would someone make one group subsidize another? If this practice is old enough there may have even been some kind of greasing the palm (payoff) to implement such an unfair practice.

Common sense and fairness dictates that all properties should be appraised at their fair market value, no more and no less. New York State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer's has written a bill to correct this situation and even the playing field. With the stalemate happening in Albany, New York, (please refer to my 7/6/09 blog), time will tell if this bill makes it to the floor for a vote or even more importantly, will this bill win the majority of votes and become law? Unless this bill is attached to some other silly bill, I think that it should become law and make condo and co-ops pay their fair share of taxes.

I am just amazed at how the lack of common sense especially when not used by politicians can have a serious financial strain on the constituents that they are supposed to be representing.

Til next week.