June 24, 2011
Full Owner Property Values Adjusted
Fellow Homeowners:
At a hearing on June 15 in Jeffersonville, Attorney Hans Huessy accompanied by Joe Ingram represented 60 SNHA member homes whose owners had engaged Mr. Huessy to present their case for an appeal (grievance) of their Cambridge Grand List values. These are the values that are used to calculate each home’s portion of the taxes paid to the Town of Cambridge for Town operations and education. As you will recall, SNHA communicated this offer to appeal to all SNHA member homeowners back in February 2011. Since early March, SNHA has assisted the participating homes to have appraisals completed in order to document the current market value of the homes and file the appeals. After reviewing the data presented by Mr. Huessy, the Listers have notified him that his SNHA member clients would be granted the request to lower the listed values of their respective homes in Smugglers Notch Resort. Not only did the Listers lower the listed values of homes represented in this SNHA initiative, but we have been advised that as a result of the 60 grievances filed, the Listers have recognized a pattern of over-assessment and decided to adjust the values of all full ownership condos in the Town of Cambridge.
This is good news for all of us relative to achieving a more fair tax bill in today’s real estate market.
We owe thanks to SNHA Board members who began this project and review two years ago, and to Hans Huessy who has assisted the 60 SNHA member homes in leading the way to the Listers hearing.
We are advised that you will be receiving notification from the Cambridge Board of Listers via USPS certified mail. Note that the Board of Listers is holding the letters to our Canadian members until the postal strike is Canada is resolved.
While the SNHA board and committee are pleased with the progress made so far, we must note that the reduction approved by the Listers on average is only about half of what the actual appraisals would indicate as being justified.
We will be evaluating next steps over the weekend and will bring you up to date early next week about the options available to us
· to accept the Listers’ decision and adjustments, or
· to take this appeal to the next level and if successful there, to achieve adjustments which are more in line with the current market and documented appraised values that we have obtained in our review.
Stay tuned for more details next week.
We hope to see you at the SNHA Annual Meeting and picnic on July 2 coming up next weekend.
Regards,
Barb McGee C 28
SNHA Board – Real Estate Committee Chair
