Do Taxes Increase When You Buy A House?

No. Property taxes are not affected by the sale of a home. Property assessments change when there are town-wide reassessments. This is when every property's worth is re-evaluated. Your house may go up in value, down in value, or just stay the same. Do keep in mind that assessors cannot enter your home. They will have to re-evaluate your home based on what they see from the outside, town records, or anything online. Overall, assessments tend to stay the same unless there have been major changes to the home. All local governments conduct assessments differently. Some will keep up with property assessments, while others only really look at assessments when permits are taken out—usually to make renovations.

In New York, we have a few reassessing districts which keep up with assessments every year. You would think every township would do this...but the majority are actually non-reassessing districts, which means that they could do a reassessment this year, or in ten years—there is no schedule or timeline for their reassessments. Your assessment isn't the only thing that determines your tax bill. Taxes can go up or down, even if your assessment does not change. This is due to the tax rate, which changes every year. NYS issues an RAR to every township in NY, those can be found here. Remember the Assessment / RAR = IFMV and the Assessment x Tax Rate = Total Taxes. If your IFMV is more than what you paid for the house, you are being overcharged and we highly suggest that you grieve your taxes. If the IFMV is under, it is likely that you are being fairly assessed.

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Here's the list of the townships we know keep up with assessments:

• Columbia: Chatham Town, Ghent Town
• Delaware: Andes Town, Hamden Town
• Dutchess: City of Beacon, City of Poughkeepsie, Amenia Town, Clinton Town, East Fishkill Town, Fishkill Town, Milan Town, Northeast Town, Pine Plains Town, Poughkeepsie Town, Red Hook Town, Tivoli Town, Rhinebeck Town, Stanford Town, Wappinger Town
• Nassau: Mineola, Great Neck, Lake Success, Russell Gardens, Westbury, Williston Park, Farmingdale, Sea Cliff
• Orange: Newburgh City
• Putnam: Town of Carmel, Town of Patterson, Town of Putnam Valley, Town of Southeast
• Rockland: Pomonia, Piermont
• Suffolk: Village of Dering Harbor, Village of North Haven, Village of Quogue, Village of Sagaponack
• Ulster: Olive Town, Saugerties Town
• Westchester: Bronxville Village, Greenburgh Town, Mamaroneck Town, Larchmont Village, North Salem Town, Ossining Town, Pelham Town, Rye Town, Scarsdale Town

Furthermore, if none of the above works for you, you can always give a call to town hall and ask them about reassessments. The majority of townships in NY do keep assessments fairly accurate. As we know, Nassau County went through a reassessment in 2018 which had some major impacts on tax bills. In order to ease the transition, they passed the TPP which is explained here. If you believe that you are overpaying in taxes, give us a call and we can help you get started in lowering those tax bills!