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Reassessment analysis

July 12
Like real estate, location matters

Municipality you live in can dramatically impact over- or under-assessments.

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter

The rule of thumb repeated numerous times before and during countywide reassessment was that there would be roughly an equal number of people with taxes going up, down and staying about the same.

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Related Document

municipalities by range

Countywide, that prediction was reasonably close, but there are enormous variations in the number of winners and losers when you look at each municipality.

According to a Times Leader analysis, countywide about 42 percent of all taxable properties had been significantly under-assessed before the current reassessment was done, while 24 percent had been significantly over-assessed. Almost exactly one-third – 34 percent – had been reasonably assessed.

But that’s just a county average. What municipality you live in can dramatically affect the odds of having been over- or under-assessed. At the top of the chart, Harveys Lake had about 84 percent of its properties seriously under-assessed; meaning many residents likely got new assessments far higher than the old ones. On the other end of the spectrum, Conyngham Borough and Laflin Borough had only 16 percent of their properties significantly over-assessed.

To make the calculations, The Times Leader used a system recommended by Tim Barr of the reassessment company 21st Century Appraisals Inc. We looked at every parcel in every municipality, and divided the new total assessed value by the old assessed value to get a ratio that essentially is a multiplier of how many times the old value rose through reassessment.

The countywide ratio is 26.33, which can be considered a sort of break-even point. Properties with ratios higher than that were probably under-assessed under the old system (and may see taxes rise), while properties with ratios below that likely were over-assessed (and may see taxes drop).

It’s important to stress that we used raw data that does not include any changes done through hearings or appeals currently going on.

We sorted property ratios for each municipality into three categories. The middle category is within 20 percent of that break-even point, and properties with ratios ranging from 21.13 to 31.69 were considered to have been reasonably assessed under the old system. Any parcels with ratios below that range were considered to have been significantly over-assessed in the past, and any properties with ratios above that range were considered to have been significantly over-assessed.

Twenty-one municipalities had between 26 percent and 40 percent of their properties significantly under-assessed. In 40 municipalities the percentage of significantly over-assessed properties ranged from 40 to 60 percent.

The municipality that came closest to actually having one-third of its properties in each category? Butler Township, where 32 percent of the properties had been significantly under-assessed, 37 percent had been in the middle range, and 31 percent had been significantly over-assessed.

Another way to judge the numbers would be to ignore the high and low percentages and look at how many parcels fell in the middle range, meaning those property owners may see a tax change, but it shouldn’t be too substantial. Hazleton and West Pittston both had 46 percent of their properties in the middle range, the highest percentage in the county. West Hazleton Borough had 45 percent, Wilkes-Barre City had 43 percent, and Freeland and Hughestown boroughs and Fairview Township each had 42 percent.

Harveys Lake had the worse percentage of properties in the middle range, 11 percent. Not surprisingly, it also had the lowest rate of properties that had been significantly over-assessed, a scant 5 percent

It’s also important to note that properties with high ratios could be and sometimes were extremely high. While the county average is 26.33, we ran into many parcels with three- and even four-digit ratios, meaning their new values were more than 1,000 times what the old values had been. While we looked at percentage of ratios in three ranges, we didn’t look at the variations among the ratios within each range.

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7161