Officials say they’re working toward the next town-wide revaluation and plan to capture an updated snapshot of all real property values in New Canaan as of Oct. 1, 2018.
Working with a private company, town workers will complete a “statistical” rather than comprehensive valuation of New Canaan, according to Assessor Sebastian Caldarella.
In other words, rather than entering residents’ homes to help determine values—an expensive and time-consuming process that state law requires every 10 years—the work involves studying home sales and market trends as well as permits issued for new construction in town, Caldarella told members of the Town Council during an informational update at their Jan. 18 meeting.
“This will affect tax bills going out July 2019,” Caldarella said during the meeting, held at Town Hall.
New Canaan last underwent a town-wide revaluation in 2013.
Property owners who are unhappy with their Oct. 1, 2013 valuations may come to the Town Assessor’s office at 77 Main St. and fill out a short form between Feb. 1 and 20 in order to get a hearing before the Board of Assessment Appeals (more info here), Caldarella said.
He underscored that those appeals should be based on the Oct. 1, 2013 value date: “Not today, not yesterday.”
Noting that the real estate market has seen volatility in the last five years, councilman John Engel asked Caldarella whether New Canaan could pursue a comprehensive revaluation this time around.
“You said this [next reval] will not be as comprehensive as the one we did five years ago,” Engel said. “What is the reason for that, given that the minimum standard is a complete revaluation every five?”
Caldarella answered that the town could do a full reval now if it wanted to spend more money on the process, “but it doesn’t make sense” because the update for October 2018 will accomplish the same goal by correcting the assessor’s real estate data.
Saying that after its last full revaluation, New Canaan saw an approximately 3 percent drop in total real estate values here—a change that many attribute to large private properties coming off of the tax rolls after their transfer to nonprofit organizations—and approximately $80 million increases annually since then, Engel asked whether “we could see a 1-2-3 percent change in the Grand List as a result of a major revaluation?”
Caldarella answered that there are too many variables to predict right now what’s going to happen “because it is still two years from now.”
“Hopefully next year we will have a better sense of what the market is doing,” the assessor said. “It’s the economy, new president. We have to see.”
Caldarella added as a word of caution that the town of Fairfield recently finished its Grand List following a full revaluation and that it dropped about 1.77 percent.
“They associated that with market conditions,” Caldarella said.
Town Council Vice Chairman Steve Karl asked whether one reason for Fairfield’s decrease could be because that town’s largest single taxpayer, GE, sold its 56-acre corporate campus to Sacred Heart University (for $31.5 million).
Karl asked whether New Canaan had any similar situations here.
“Not that I am aware of,” Caldarella said.
The assessor doesn’t know whether we have a situation where our largest single taxpayer is leaving? That’s rich.