Eye-Popping Revaluations Hit Different Blocks At Different Rates

On Exchange Street in Fair Haven, Edwin Rodriguez opened his mail this week to find out that the two-family house his family has owned for three decades has increased in value by 68 percent. 

On Livingston Street in East Rock, Nancy Angoff learned that the single-family home she and her husband ​“downsized” into less than three years ago has jumped in value by 31 percent. 

Rodriguez and Angoff weren’t the only New Haveners to discover this week that the houses they live in or rent out will be considered worth quite a bit more when tax bills go out next year than they have been for the past half-decade. 

That’s because the city is currently wrapping up its latest ​“full” revaluation, which per state law must take place at least once every five years.

What that means for city property owners’ tax bills is still unclear. 

While the revaluation of residential properties is complete, the revaluation of commercial properties is still underway — so the city does not yet know how much the grand list (that is, the total value of all properties in the city) grew by.

Just because someone’s appraisal rises, say, 30 percent, doesn’t necessarily mean their taxes will rise 30 percent. Or even at all. It depends how much the city decides to spend, and how that burden gets distributed based on how much some properties gain in value compared to others.

The ​“reval” process has to wrap up in the next few weeks because the city assessor is required by state law to sign off on a final grand list by the end of January. The mayor and the alders will have to settle on a new mill rate next spring during the annual city budget-making season. (See more below for what all of that means.)

Meanwhile, Rodriguez’s and Angoff’s experiences — as well as those of their immediate Fair Haven and East Rock neighbors — offer a look into how the complicated and consequential process of assigning new values to every property in the city plays out at the block-by-block level. 

They also show how some of the steepest property value increases by percentage are likely to take place in parts of the city where previously low-priced homes have sold at an accelerated clip and at relatively high prices over the past five years. 

As a case study to better understand this year’s reval, the Independent randomly selected 25 adjacent residential properties on two particular streets in two very different neighborhoods.

On Exchange Street between Blatchley Avenue and Ferry Street, in a predominantly working-class Hispanic section of Fair Haven, residential property values increased by an average of 68.7 percent. 

That marked a $96,748 jump from the 2016 average appraised value of $143,256 to the 2021 average appraised value of $240,004 among those properties.

On Livingston Street between Edwards Street and Linden Street, in a wealthier and whiter section of East Rock, residential property values increased by an average of 22.8 percent. 

That marked a $121,986 jump from the 2016 averaged appraised value of $544,342 to the 2021 average appraised value of $666,328 among those properties.

“It’s a lot easier to go up a higher percentage when you’re starting with a lower number,” City Assessor Alex Pullen said when asked about the Exchange Street-Livingston Street divergence in a recent interview in his first-floor City Hall office.

He emphasized that in a revaluation year, ​“everything is brought to market” — that is, the values of every property in the city are adjusted with as much accuracy as possible to reflect their true market worth. (The ​“appraised value” equates to a property’s estimated market value, and the ​“assessed value” is 70 percent of that estimated market worth.)

There could be a host of reasons for why homes in the area of Exchange Street are selling at and revalued at higher values by percentage than those on Livingston Street, he said. It could be because the barrier to entry to buy a $240,000 home is much lower than that to buy a $666,000 home. It could be because those higher-priced East Rock properties are selling at ​“closer to where their ceiling is already.” It could be because of the pandemic-induced glut of real estate investors flush with cash competing for limited supply.

“We can’t tell you why more houses sold” at X percentage above their previously assigned value in one part of the city and at Y percentage above their value in another area, Pullen repeated. ​“But we can tell you that they did. We can look at them and say, ​‘This is what people are paying for them.’ The motivations for paying more? Your guess is as good as mine.”

Residential Done; Commercial Underway

Before a closer look begins at what happened on Exchange Street and Livingston Street this year, it might be good to level set. 

What is revaluation again? Why is this happening? Why’s it important? And where are we in New Haven’s reval timeline?

State law requires that municipalities undertake a comprehensive re-assessment twice a decade to try to bring all properties’ official, taxable values in line with their actual market worth. The last time New Haven had a full revaluation was 2016.

The housing market is ​“constantly changing over five years,” Pullen said. ​“Our goal in the revaluation is to bring the properties as close to their market value as possible, so that we can make sure that the tax burden is distributed equitably throughout the city.”

New Haven’s latest reval process began in June 2020 when the city put out a request for proposals (RFP) for a third-party contractor to lead the way in re-appraising New Haven’s 25,000-plus properties. Three companies responded, and the city wound up selecting Vision Government Solutions. Vision signed a contract in September 2020. 

In December 2020, the real work of reval began. Vision and the city started sending out data mailers to all property owners, asking them to verify and update a host of different information about their properties. 

In January 2021, Vision staffers started combing the city, knocking doors and visually inspecting thousands of properties. That in-the-field work took place from January through August. 

All the while, Vision and city staffers were reviewing and analyzing hundreds of recent property sales and breaking the city into different ​“assessment districts” based on geographically contiguous properties that have recently sold at comparable rates.

After a year’s worth of phone calls and site inspections and property-sales-number-crunching, the city assessor’s office started sending out notices on Dec. 3 to roughly 21,000 homeowners and landlords across New Haven. 

In each letter is information about that respective residential property’s 2016 value, as set during the last citywide ​“reval,” as well as that same property’s new 2021 value resulting from this year’s work. 

How exactly is that new 2021 value determined for a residential property?

On a residential property, Pullen said, Vision and the city use both the ​“sales approach” and the ​“cost approach.” 

Vision creates a ​“blended model, which we call a modified cost approach. The reason for that is not every property is sold. If every property in the city is sold, then the market value is the sale price. But because every property didn’t sell, they have to approximate what all the properties that didn’t sell would sell for based on the ones that did sell.”

They also take into account any changes to a property that have taken place over the past five years — such as a new addition, or a demolished garage. 

“Essentially, the reason that everyone’s property has gone up,” Pullen said, ​“is because the sales prices are going up.”

Pullen and Mayor Justin Elicker both emphasized that the citywide revaluation process is not yet complete: The assessor’s office and Vision are still finishing up assigning values to all commercial properties in town. 

Notices have been sent out so far only to owners of residential properties — meaning condos, single-family, two-family, three-family, and four-family homes. 

Those residential property owners have until Dec. 15 to file an informal appeal of their new property valuations with Vision Appraisal by going to this website. All properties owners can also file an appeal with the city’s Board of Assessment Appeals by the annual deadline of Feb. 20.

The owners of commercial properties — which include residential rental properties with five or more apartments — should get their revaluation notices in the mail in the coming weeks. 

Ultimately, Pullen said, he is required by state law to sign off on a final grand list by Jan. 31, 2022. 

Pullen and Elicker also stressed that how these new property values will affect each property owner’s tax burden is still uncertain.

That’s because a property’s appraised value is just one of two key factors that determines its tax liability. The other key factor is the mill rate — which represents $1 in taxes owed for every $1,000 in assessed property value. 

The mill rate is set each year in the city budget by the mayor and the Board of Alders. The current mill rate is 43.88. The city applies the mill rate to a property’s assessed value to determine its annual tax liability.

After citywide revaluations, the mayor and alders tend to reduce the mill rate. That’s because, as property values go up and the grand list expands, the city is able to raise the money it needs to balance its books while taxing those same properties at a lower rate. 

“We recognize receiving these notices can be surprising, especially if your property has seen a significant increase in value,” Elicker wrote in a mass email sent out last Friday. ​“Please know once this process is closer to complete, we will follow-up with more information about how this round of revaluations may impact the city’s mill-rate and ultimately your tax bill.”

“Revaluation makes sure that the tax burden is distributed equitably,” Pullen reiterated when asked for his take on how the citywide reval is connected to residents’ tax burdens. ​“It brings everything up to its true market value, so that everyone’s paying the share they should be.” 

The mill rate is more of a political decision for policymakers like the mayor and the alders to figure out come budget-making season next spring, he said. Revaluation, on the other hand, is more about determining each property’s true market worth.

Exchange St.: "Hard To Feel Safe Around Here"

With a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-lit cigarette in the other, Edwin Rodriguez said that there is an upside to the city’s much-higher assessment of his Exchange Street house: He believes the new number from the city is more in line with how much his home is actually worth.

“I appreciate that they see the value” of this house, he said as snow began to fall on Fair Haven Wednesday.

According to the city assessor’s database, Rodriguez’s two-family house at 192 Exchange St. was previously appraised at $148,000. After revaluation, its new appraised value is $249,000. That’s a 68 percent jump.

How does he feel about the prospect of likely paying more in local property taxes, given the steep increase in his house’s assessment?

No one likes a higher tax bill, Rodriguez said with a smile beneath his blue medical mask. ​“But we’re gonna have to get used to it.”

Born in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez said his family first moved to Fair Haven when he was four years old. He’s lived all over the neighborhood. His family has owned 192 Exchange St. for nearly three decades, and his parents live two houses away on the same block.

“I’ve been in Fair Haven for a long ass time,” he said with a laugh.

Much more concerning than his property tax bill is the ​“epidemic” of drug use in the neighborhood, particularly near the intersection of Exchange and Ferry Street. ​“There are syringes all over the place,” he said. ​“It’s gotten bad.”

Iliana Rosario agreed.

She owns a two-family house at 213 Exchange St. She bought the property for $100,000 in 2017, when it was appraised at $117,800. After this year’s revaluation, it’s now appraised at $225,900 — a 91 percent jump.

“I am worried about taxes going up,” she said. 

But even more than that, she’s worried about the increasingly high ​“crime rate.”

“This is a low-income community,” she said. ​“It’s kind of hard to actually feel safe around here.”

Being so close to Ferry Street, she said, there’s ​“a lot of drug use, a lot of prostitution. You hear a lot of break-ins happening, cars and things like that. There’s cops on the street, whether it’s on my block or the block on Ferry, pretty much every night.”

She said she moved to New Haven from New York City to escape what she saw as an unsafe place to live for her and her family. ​“It’s comparable to the crimes rates in New York,” she said about Exchange Street, ​“which is what I was trying to get away from.”

Taking shelter from the snow on the doorstep of his two-family house at 190 Blatchley Ave. at the corner of Exchange Street, Edwin Reboyras offered a pithier take on reval. 

“Everything’s too expensive,” he said before going back inside.

His property was last appraised as worth $166,000. After this reval, it’s now appraised 67 percent higher at $278,100.

A closer look at changing values at neighboring properties show that Rodriguez’s, Rosario’s, and Reboyras’s experiences are par for the course for that stretch of Exchange.

A two-family house at 168 Exchange St. increased in appraised value by 70 percent, from $127,500 to $217,200.

A three-family house at 187 Exchange St. increased in appraised value by 63 percent, from $158,400 to $258,500. It last sold in 2012 for $75,660.

And a two-family house at 212 Exchange St. increased in appraised value by 139 percent, from $85,700 to $205,300. It last sold in 2014 for $85,000.

Click on the on the map above for more reval details on each of the Exchange Street homes the Independent reviewed.

Livingston St.: "More Of A Jump"

Across town in East Rock, Nancy Angoff took a quick break from a Zoom meeting to describe the unwelcome surprise of seeing that her single-family home at 20 Livingston St. has increased in value by 31 percent.

“We wanted to downsize” when she and her husband moved to Livingston Street from nearby Everit Street three-and-a-half years ago, she said. ​“We expected that we would be keeping our taxes lower.” After this revaluation, she fears that hope may be dashed.

Angoff and her husband purchased their single-family home on Livingston Street in 2018 for $485,000.

The property was then appraised by the city as worth $423,843. After this year’s revaluation, it’s now appraised as worth $558,700.

“We’re retirees,” she said. ​“The whole point [of moving houses] was to reduce expenses.”

Unlike the Angoffs, Rob Berman has been living on Livingston Street for decades. Just like his neighbors, he was a bit put out by how high his 77 Livingston St. single-family home’s property value shot up during the reval.

“It does seem more dramatic than previous” revaluation years, he said. ​“It’s more of a jump.”

“I’m happy to pay my fair share” of taxes, he said, ​“as long as it’s equitably done.”

Berman and his wife bought 77 Livingston St. for $222,500 in 1998. 

In 2016, the city appraised the property as worth $570,100. This year, its appraisal jumped by 29 percent to $738,900.

Once again, a closer look at changing property values on the block shows that Angoff’s and Berman’s experiences are on par for Livingston St.

A two-family house at 31 Livingston St. saw its appraised value increase by 15 percent, from $603,500 to $695,700.

A single-family house at 45 Livingston St. saw its appraised value increase by 30 percent, from $506,600 to $659,200. The property last sold for $570,000 in 2009.

And a single-family house at 71 Livingston St. saw its appraised value increase by 41 percent, from $508,400 to $717,700. The property last sold for $630,000 in 2013.

Click on the on the map below for more reval details on each of the Livingston Street homes the Independent reviewed.