Property Owners Can Use Latest Technology To Forecast Revaluation Impact

By John Voket

There is a name for a person who can predict the future. But what do you call the person who can help every property owner in Newtown predict the future impact of the current revaluation process?

You call that person Newtown Assessor Tom DeNoto.

This week, Mr DeNoto announced that local property owners can use the latest technology and data available to help fine-tune the data that will then produce revised valuations of real estate. He said as of this week, field representatives from Total Valuation Services, LLC, have completed surveying and compiling about 75 percent of the data for the state-mandated revaluation process.

The results of this comprehensive inspection process will first become evident in tax bills going out July 1, 2008. Currently, field workers are working their way through the north central part of town, Mr DeNoto said, in areas adjacent to Mt Pleasant Road and the Currituck Road neighborhoods.

Other field reps have been concentrating on commercial data collection for about two weeks, and are currently surveying businesses and commercial property in the Botsford area and around lower South Main Street in the Waterfall Plaza and Sand Hill Shopping Center.

Beginning next week, a new phase of the data refining process will begin. Letters from the assessor’s office will begin arriving at residential homes along with updated field card information that has been entered into the local database from 2007 revaluation field reps.

“It’s all part of our attempts to make the revaluation process as interactive and transparent as possible,” Mr DeNoto said. “The minute we have new systems available for property owners to see what is happening in relation to this state-mandated activity, we are trying to make it available to the taxpayers.”

Part of making the data more comprehensive and easily available will be an integrated computer system that will allow assessor’s office personnel to call up specific parcels in their data system and automatically access the GIS satellite image and related data that was formerly in another separate software system.

The incoming letters ask property owners to take a few minutes to familiarize themselves with the latest data about their homes and parcels, and to contact the valuation vendor or the assessor’s office directly if they see something that looks amiss.

“The letter will introduce property owners to all the latest data available on their specific properties,” he said. “Currently we are up to date on aspects of more than 11,800 parcels in town.”

By involving property owners at this early juncture, Mr DeNoto hopes to enlist them as participants in the quality control process, better ensuring the most precise details are locked into the system before the final revaluation is calculated.

“We are all trying to be as precise as possible. But with all the properties, some clerical errors may occur,” he explained. “By using the property owner in the QC process, we are making the revaluation more transparent, and potentially correcting any misreported information before the final revaluation is complete.”

This could save taxpayers the time involved with documenting inconsistencies to the Board of Assessment Appeals once the final data is sent into the system and generates new values for local properties. Any revised information from the taxpayer will set the standard for future database resources, Mr DeNoto added.

“We just want to be very up front with our taxpayers about the data that has already been collected,” he said. By going to the vendor’s website at www.totalvaluation.com taxpayers can compare the existing field card data with the information attached to their letter to determine if any adjustments that were made in the current field reporting process are accurate.

“These should be obvious clerical issues — improperly reported square footage, finished versus unfinished areas, various features,” he said. “Our ultimate goal is to process the revaluation based on the cleanest database possible.

“Basically it is keeping the homeowners and taxpayers fully in the loop about what will be behind their final revaluation numbers,” Mr DeNoto said.

Mr DeNoto has said in previous interviews that the greatest misconception about a revaluation process is that it creates higher taxes, when in fact the process simply creates or updates data — a new mass appraisal of all real property in town.

“It’s really a misunderstood practice, which is really quite important to taxpayers because it can actually save them money,” the assessor said.

“Things can happen at the federal or state level that trickle down to impact local mill rates and taxes, but the revaluation process does not trigger tax increases,” Mr DeNoto said. “In fact, a revaluation can often result in lower property taxes, especially on automobiles.”

He referenced the difference between the 2001 and 2002 tax rates where the revaluation process dropped the Newtown mill rate from 33.8 to 23.4.

“In practical terms, that means someone who owned a vehicle appraised at $10,000 paid $338 in taxes in 2001, and that same vehicle was taxed at only $234 in 2002, even if there was little or no depreciation on that vehicle because of use,” he said.

And in areas like Newtown where there are significant increases in commercial developments coupled with increases in rents for commercial space, the reval can actually translate into a subtle shift in the tax burden, taking some pressure off residential property owners.