New Nassau County tax roll freezes property values

Nassau County has published its property assessment roll for the 2022-23 tax year, freezing values in an effort to prevent sharp swings in assessments caused by surging home sales during the coronavirus pandemic.

The county relies on past home sales to update assessments each year. But for the upcoming 2022-23 tax year, county officials did not want to incorporate swings in home prices that occurred in some neighborhoods as a result of spiking sales.

County officials said they would wait to change values until the housing market has stabilized.

"The pandemic has caused Nassau’s home values to spike — with many New York City residents desiring a safe, suburban, quality community to raise their families — underscoring the value of Nassau County," Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said in a statement.

"While this is good news for our current homeowners, the dramatic increase in sales prices would unfairly skew property assessment," Curran said. "By temporarily pausing property assessment updates, we can allow families and businesses to focus on the task of rebuilding their finances at a time of enormous economic uncertainty."

Changes in a home's valuation can affect property tax bills.

The freeze is set to take effect in the third year of the countywide reassessment, which Curran ordered in 2018 to update property values for the first time in a decade.

Years of granting mass assessment reductions to homeowners who challenged their assessments, along with a nearly decadelong freeze in the roll, had led to inaccuracies and undervaluation of thousands of properties.

The effect was that residents who did not challenge their property assessments ended up shouldering a disproportionate share of the property tax burden.

Under the "phased-in" reassessment, as Curran refers to it, homeowners will be paying their full share of the tax burden by the end of a five-year period.

Curran, a Democrat who is up for reelection in November, announced the freeze for 2022-23 on Dec. 2.

During the 2020-21 tax year — the first to be affected by reassessment — 65% of residents are due tax increases on school district tax bills, according to county data, compared with 35% who will see reductions.

Under Curran's freeze, values will stay at 2021-22 levels, except for residents whose assessments were corrected due to an error, received a reduction in valuation or who altered the property physically or petitioned for a map change, a county spokeswoman said.

Residents have until March 1 to file an appeal through the Assessment Review Commission.

The commission must issue responses by March 31, 2022. Challenges to ARC decisions must be filed in court proceedings, known as small claims assessment review, by the end of April 2022.

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.