Chair Lee on redlining history and equitable assessment practices
Lee asks how DOF incorporates the history of redlining into current assessment policies. Commissioner Lee and First Deputy Commissioner Shear explain the consistent sales-based valuation methodology, and Shear notes that assessment caps disproportionately impact non-gentrifying neighborhoods with higher effective tax rates, underscoring the need for reform.
The agency acknowledges the historic impacts of redlining and inequitable property assessment practices.
How is your agency incorporating that historical context into current assessment policies, outreach efforts, and homeowner protections?
So I'll pass to our first deputy in a second, but our assessments, we utilize a very specific formula, and we look at properties in a very specific area in order to determine our assessments.
So for class one properties, we'll look at sales and comparable areas to determine what their market value is.
From there, we calculate the assessed value based upon the assessment ratio target, and then apply the caps.
So it is a very sort of formulaic way that we do all of our assessments, whether you live in Southeast Queens or Northeast Queens, right?
So the formula is the same in that it's all sales-based.
For our co-op and condo market, again, that is in our class two, which goes back to reform a little bit, in that we have to utilize comparable
rents and utilize their income and expense information to determine what their market rate and their sales values are.
But we have a fairly consistent valuation methodology across the board, whether you live in Queens or Brooklyn.
I'll let our first deputy maybe expand a little bit on our methodology.
Well, I would like to just emphasize what the commissioner was saying, that property tax reform is really a key.
component here because while we have the same methodology, for example, for assessing class one homes throughout the city, the caps that limit how quickly
a home can have its assessed value increase have a disproportionate impact on
neighborhoods that are have not been gentrifying so those neighborhoods have
assessment ratios that are relatively high and so they have higher effective tax rates compared to neighborhoods that have been gentrifying
They have the values have been going up, but because of the caps, their values have not been keeping pace.
So that's why we think the conversation about property tax reform is so important.
And that's why it's so important for us to do a comprehensive review and to get the.
Property tax reform right before we propose something formally to the legislature.