Assessing
Since property assessment serves as the foundation for the generation of local tax revenues no one can afford to have inconsistencies. Municipal Resources, Inc. can help communities with cost-effective, assessing services. Our certified assessors use fair, equitable, and professional assessment procedures to ensure equity in property valuation. This promotes a sense of fairness in the distribution of the tax burden, thus increasing satisfaction, while reducing appeals and related legal expenses for the community.
With 25 years’ experience supporting municipalities in all aspects of municipal operations, including tax assessing, we are confident that we understand the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of local government in New England better than any other firm in the marketplace today. Our goal is to develop long term client relationships that support the highest possible quality of property assessments, while minimizing operational and management costs to the Town.
MRI can contract with municipalities to out-source their entire assessing operation, saving employment and operational costs. Our team approach provides access a variety of expertise when it is needed, ultimately providing a cost effective approach to your municipality's assessing needs. Appropriate staff is available for the tasks at hand, allowing you to draw on our senior staff for appeals, expert testimony and guidance on unique or complex property reviews when needed.
View our current assessing staff
Contracted Assessing Services
Maximize your investment in a revaluation by providing for more than just annual “pick ups” in your property assessment program. Our team approach provides access a variety of expertise when it is needed, ultimately providing a cost effective approach to your municipality's assessing needs. Appropriate staff is available for the tasks at hand, allowing you to draw on our senior staff for appeals, expert testimony and guidance on unique or complex property reviews when needed.
Annual Pick-ups - Annual inspection of those properties that have undergone some form of change (addition, new construction, demolition, renovation, construction completed from prior years, etc.). This information is generally gathered from permits or inventory forms. Our assessor visits the property and updates the property record card with new information as it exists on April 1st of the current year. Our services can complement or supplement in-house staff, and help with surge periods.
Sale Property Verification - Send out written surveys and requests for inspection to owners of all sold properties to ensure accurate assessing information as of the date of sale. This is especially important since sales properties are used to establish baselines for assessments of all properties.
Cyclical Inspections - We conduct verification by systematic sampling of all physical data on each property through on-site inspections of a percentage (usually 20% or 25%) of all properties each year. This ensures that assessing data is accurate and eliminates the need to re-measure and re-list all properties over a very short period of time for valuation updates
Current Use - Review of current use records to ensure proper documentation is on file and the placement in current use meets Department of Revenue Administration (DRA) assessment review guidelines. Review of new applications to ensure proper information is submitted and make recommendations to Town assessing officials. Review of properties in current use that have sold or on which construction has occurred to ensure proper calculation of the qualifying and non qualifying areas, and issue the correct land use change tax.
Exemptions - Review of current records to ensure proper documentation is on file and meets the Department of Revenue Administration assessment review guidelines. Review of new applications to ensure qualifying information is submitted and make recommendations to Town assessing officials.
Defense of Values and Expert Witness - Process abatement requests at the local level beginning with an inspection of the property to ensure the physical data is accurate. After reviewing data submitted with the application, recommendations are made to Town assessing officials. In appeals above the local level, we review all pertinent information and represent the Town as an expert witness if assessment is found to equitable. If our review shows that the assessment appears to be incorrect, a recommendation for correction will be made to the Town assessing officials.
Timber (Yield) Taxes - Review intents and reports of cut to ensure proper documentation is provided and correct yield tax amounts are assessed.
Map Updating - Making ink changes to the maps as a result of subdivisions, surveys, deeds, etc. Checking the revised maps from the community’s mapping company to ensure that all changes were made correctly.
Revaluations and Partial Updates
Revaluations: Conduct DRA recommended cyclical or full measure and list revaluation to ensure equitable values across all properties within a municipality. MRI will verify, measure and list sale properties, perform field reviews, set new values, conduct informal hearings and prepare a USPAP compliant manual.
Partial Updates: Conducted between updates of all properties to 100% of market value to analyze sales of various property types (vacant land, condominiums, mobile homes, commercial property, waterfront property, etc.). Since different types of properties tend to change in value at differing rates, this allows the assessing officials to adjust specific categories of properties whose values have fallen out of sync with the Town’s overall ratio to bring them back in-line with the rest of the municipality.
Oversight: MRI has an excellent working relationship with revaluation companies throughout New England and we are able to conduct control measures to ensure the Town is getting the quality work product it desires/deserves from the revaluation or update. We can help draft the contract, spot check data collection to ensure accurate property descriptions, work with the revaluation company in determining base rates or check them after they are developed, but before they are applied to all properties, spot check informal hearings and the changes made as a result of them and ensure the final ratios are where the Town wants them to be.