East End tax protests surge 50% or more amid hot housing market, tax firm expansion

Owners of more than 54,000 Suffolk homes challenged their property assessments last year, with jumps of more than 50% on the East End, a Newsday analysis found, amid prolonged assessment freezes in most towns and a spike in filings from tax firms.

In four East End towns, homeowner assessment challenges surged more than 50% last year, a Newsday data analysis found: Grievances grew by 59% in Southold, 53% in Riverhead and 50% in East Hampton. In tiny Shelter Island, the increase was 264% as challenges nearly quadrupled from 36 to 131. Elsewhere across the county, townwide increases ranged from 14% in Islip to 41% in Babylon. Smithtown did not provide data for last year, so a comparison could not be drawn between the past two years.

The 54,238 grievances across Suffolk’s 10 towns accounted for about 12% of Suffolk's 454,000 residential properties. Many Suffolk towns are relying on assessment rolls frozen decades ago. In six of the towns, the most recent update was before 1974, according to state records. 

Newsday analyzed residential tax challenge data from the towns for the 2025-26 tax year, the most recent in which countywide data was available. In Suffolk, the 10 towns manage the property assessments, whereas in Nassau the county values the properties.

The data is focusing fresh attention on most Suffolk towns' failures to keep assessments up to date in one of the nation's highest-taxed and -priced real estate markets. Some critics question the wisdom, and sustainability, of keeping valuations frozen, especially as tax firms seize on vulnerabilities in the calculations and home sales spike to record levels.

"Whether it's property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes — if you don't maintain the system, then the very reason to have the tax system in the first place is lost," said Larry Clark, a longtime assessor in the Midwest and formerly of the International Association of Assessing Officers in Kansas City, Missouri. "The only reason property is appraised ... is to distribute the property tax burden fairly. Well, you can't guarantee that unless you reappraise the property on a regular basis."

Some tax firm representatives said that by keeping the assessments frozen, towns have failed to capture precise valuation changes among the many smaller communities and neighborhoods. 

When homeowners win reductions, the tax burden is ultimately shifted onto those who do not, worsening inequities for those overassessed.

Town assessors offered a few explanations for the increases: In Shelter Island, the assessor blamed it on taxpayers' sticker shock following a recent townwide reassessment. In East Hampton, the assessor said her push for regular reassessments has been repeatedly rebuffed over political considerations. Riverhead and other officials cited an uptick in filings from tax grievance firms. 

"This is a cottage industry that’s no longer a cottage,” said Laverne Tennenberg, who chairs Riverhead's board of assessors. “I got four solicitation letters myself, personally.”

The surge in East End challenges comes as the region struggles with affordability pressures, including record home prices on the North Fork, and a string of annual town tax hikes.

Some town officials told Newsday they are reluctant to reassess: Updating property values regularly is costly and impractical, some said. And, some assessment experts have noted, it's politically risky.

"Local officials are going to take the heat, regardless, because they are closest to the property owners — the taxpayers," Clark said. "That's why they avoid it."

A marketing push

Mark Haubner is paying more than he should in taxes on his Aquebogue home. At least that's what it said on the flyer that came in the mail.

With household expenses on the rise, Haubner said fighting his home’s assessed value in the hopes of lowering his property tax bill is one of the few ways he can save.

Costs have been escalating for a while now, said Haubner, who is 71, retired and collects Social Security. But his electric and gas bills continue to climb, he said, and the property tax bill is north of $15,000.

While incremental cost increases are manageable, he said, "it's the leaping and jumping ... that's really starting to impact us."

For years, firms have stuffed mailboxes with offers to file grievances on homeowners’ behalf. Property owners can also challenge the assessments themselves. In Suffolk, the due date is the third Tuesday in May, known as Grievance Day. 

In some towns, challenges filed by tax firms jumped sharply from 2024 to 2025.

In Riverhead, representatives filed 839 of the 856 residential tax challenges in 2024. A year later, the firms collectively filed 1,281 of 1,313 challenges, officials said.

In Babylon, representatives accounted for 5,308 of 5,354 residential grievances. A year later, they were responsible for 7,508 of 7,557 residential challenges.

And In Shelter Island, the number of residential firm filings nearly tripled from 25 in 2024 to 73 in 2025.

Stony Brook University economist John Rizzo said grieving an assessment is one way Long Island homeowners are responding to inflation, tariffs and other financial headwinds.

"When you're faced with inflationary pressures and trying to make ends meet, you do what you can to try to cut your costs elsewhere," Rizzo said.

Homeowners say the process is simple and low-risk: Firms don't usually charge a fee if a claim is denied, and towns cannot raise an assessment in response. Tax representatives usually take a percentage of the perceived savings, up to 50% in many cases.

Jeanne Nielsen, East Hampton's chair of assessors, told Newsday that Aventine Properties, a Huntington Station-based grievance firm, in particular, has ramped up activity in her town. The firm said it was responsible for filing 9,000 residential tax appeals in 2025, up nearly 5,000 from the year before.

Mailers, Nielsen said, are an effective marketing tool.

When homeowners "get something like that in the mail," she said, "whether they think they have a reduction coming or not — they just sign it.”

Frozen for years

Assessments in six of Suffolk's 10 towns were last updated before 1974, according to the state Division of Taxation and Finance. Islip's was in 1979, Riverhead's in 1980. Southampton's last assessment was for the 2019 tax year, and Shelter Island's was for this year.

Because valuations were updated so long ago, most municipalities assess at a percentage of what officials refer to as the "fair market value."

In most towns, determining a property's fair market value involves factoring in a single percentage, or fraction, often referred to as the level of assessment that can change from year to year.

Some critics say that in assigning a single factor across the town, tax authorities assume home values are changing in the same way across every community.

Because different neighborhoods or homes often appreciate at varying rates, some homeowners are paying more, and some less, than they should, taxation experts contend.

"Not everything in the market moves in this monolithic way," said James Burns, a consultant for Aventine Properties. 

Hard to keep up

The East End's real estate market, in particular, has "accelerated" since the pandemic, driving homes to record prices, said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Suffolk's median home value rose from $510,000 to $750,000 between June 2021 and this June, according to OneKey MLS, the listing service. 

The greater the change in the real estate market, "the greater the opportunity for inequities in the tax distribution," Clark said.

In Southampton, where modest homes sit in the same neighborhoods as luxury waterfront mansions, a town-wide reassessment is the only way to ensure fairness, Southampton Assessor Lisa Goree said. 

Older homes are likely paying more taxes than they should because newer homes have increased the average price in town, she said. Older homes have appreciated to a lesser degree.

Goree said stagnant assessments create the illusion that residents are being taxed fairly.

"It does open the door for more people to come in and file grievances — especially the attorneys and tax reps because they know how to work the system," Goree said.

The further out-of-date assessments grow, the harder it is for towns to get themselves back up-to-date, she added. 

One issue, officials say, is "sticker shock." Updating assessments on undervalued homes can invite a flood of challenges.

On Shelter Island, for example, inland values rose at roughly double the rate of waterfront properties between the town’s reassessment in 2021 and an update several years later, according to Town Assessor Judith Lechmanski. Many inland property owners saw their bills rise after last year's reassessment, causing a spike in protests, she said.

For homeowners like Port Jefferson resident Lenny Vicente, grieving offers an opportunity for relief from Suffolk County property taxes. Tax bills in Suffolk are the sixth-highest in the country, Newsday has reported. The average bill totals $9,253, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.​​​​​​

Vicente, through a firm, challenged the $1.1 million valuation Brookhaven Town assigned to his Port Jefferson home in 2023.

After winning his grievance, the town lowered the valuation to $825,000. Grieving, Vicente said, "becomes a part of your routine."

“I want to make sure I can afford to live here for the rest of my life and have my kids live here," he said.

Political will lacking

The potential blowback is why elected officials are reluctant to overhaul valuations.

East Hampton's Nielsen said she's been requesting a town-wide reassessment since taking office in 1988, "and it’s been a ‘no’ every year since."

"Politicians are generally afraid of losing their jobs for saying ‘yes’ to a reassessment,” Nielsen said. East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez declined to comment.

Goree, whose town reassessed annually from 2005 to 2019 with in-house staff, said doing so now would mean hiring outside appraisers. That can be an expensive undertaking, she said.

In Islip, where there are 81,000 residential parcels, “conducting a town-wide reassessment on an annual basis would be exceedingly expensive,” spokeswoman Caroline Smith told Newsday.

Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth echoed that point. A reassessment is “not necessary,” he said, because the grievance process is “effectively reassessing all of these properties on a regular basis.” Nearly 18% of Huntington's residential properties grieved in 2025 — the largest among any town.

Clark, the former director of the International Association of Assessing Officers, said he disagreed with Smyth's reasoning.

"It makes sense if you assume that all of the citizens will take advantage of that grievance process," he said. "You're going to have a lot of people within the population who may have a grievance but don't exercise that right."