Monday, April 11, 2016

Suffolk County Real Estate Tax Reduction


You can't tell a book by its cover and you can't tell a property's taxes by its assessment. 

There is a patchwork quilt of tax rates and tax assessment ratios in the 10 towns and 30 or so villages in Suffolk County. Babylon, Huntington, Islip, Brookhaven, Smithtown, Riverhead, Southampton, East Hampton, Shelter Island and Southold will all have new assessments on May 2, 2016. Protests to most of the villages are filed in February. Since the tax assessments are not made at full market value, to correctly protest you must have knowledge of the New York State assessed ratio of assessment to market value. A one million dollar commercial property in Babylon is assessed at about $12,000, in Huntington at approximately $9,000 and in Riverhead at about $145,000 - quite differing ratios and only a three week protest period to complain! Residential properties have similar wide-ranging ratios.

Every Commercial and residential property should be evaluated every year to determine if the assessment is exaggerated or erroneous.