2024 Revaluation

A Revaluation, or Market Update, is the process of updating all property values in town to reflect their current market value (i.e., to maintain reasonable estimates of what each property could sell for on the open market), as required by law.

Market adjustments are always a challenge. The goal is to appraise thousands of properties, all at one time, to create uniform, equitable and fair assessments. We strive to follow established industry standards for mass appraisal; however, we recognize that there will be situations where the mass appraisal approach may produce an estimate of value that seems somewhat high or low for an individual property. We are committed to working with all property owners to ensure that every property is assessed at a reasonable estimate of its market value as of April 1, 2024.

Please be assured that the Assessor’s office will afford all property owners a chance for an informal meeting where you can appeal your new assessed value and ask questions about the assessment process.

The last revaluation was performed by independent contractor, KRT Appraisal in 2019. Post-revaluation public workshops conducted by Town Leadership and Assessing regarding how the revaluation process could be improved upon produced two meaningful outcomes:

1. to conduct regularly scheduled revaluations, occurring every few years, to ensure that the property
   tax burden is spread equitably across all taxpayers; and
2. to use in-house Assessing staff, rather than an independent contractor, since Assessing has a “Scarborough-specific” base of knowledge of Town properties and real estate market. In addition to being able to provide
   a higher level of customer service throughout the process, using Assessing staff will reduce the cost (estimated
   to be $44,000, as compared to $391,000 for the 2018/2019 revaluation performed by KRT Appraisal).

• Last Town-Wide Revaluation: April 1, 2019
• Next Town-Wide Revaluation: April 1, 2024
• 5 Year Cycle: Future revaluations are planned to occur once every 5th year, unless special circumstances necessitate otherwise. Market update revaluations will be based upon an analysis of all available information, including sales data from the preceding two years.  This routine cycle will help to maintain a fairly apportioned property tax burden and provide predictability for taxpayers.