December 22, 2023 question:  I heard Avitar is conducting a revaluation of all homes in Thornton.  How will this affect my property taxes?

Property taxes are based on two, very complicated components:  1) how much money do we need to operate everything and 2) how do we assign who pays what?

  1. There are four components to the first issue:
    1. Town operations, roads, fire, police, etc.
    2. County operations, roads, sheriff, etc.
    3. School operations.  But this has two components, the Thornton Central School and our portion of the budget for the Plymouth Regional High school
    4. A state-mandated “education” tax that must be raised by each town.  This is determined by a complex formula by the state Department of Revenue Administration.  This is retained by the town and apportioned to the schools by the number of students in each.
  2. The second question of who pays what is determined by the valuation of everyone’s property.  In the fall of 2021, the total value of all property in town was $440,374,654.  The value of all property increased by about 3% as of December 2022 to $453.904,643.  Note that this total increases only by new construction each year, it does not include the increase in your real property value from one year to the next.  (That’s a different issue that will be discussed below.)

By way of example, the town report for 2022, published March of 2023, page 103 shows these amounts.  Here is the calculation (note the actual tax rate comes to $20.01).

Now, getting to the question of how the new revaluation will affect your taxes…

By law, in New Hampshire, the assessment of your property must be the fair market value.  But it’s unreasonable for towns to do this re-valuation every year, so the state requires it be every five years.  The last one was done in 2019 so the next one is due in 2024.  This revaluation is part of Avitar’s services.

Here’s an example of how this will affect a homeowner with a property tax bill of $8,000, roughly a current assessment of $400,000.  Assuming their property is revaluated at $600,000, a 50% increase means the entire inventory of property is increased also by 50%, so the entire inventory is not valuated at $453,904,643, but is now $680,856,965.

The result is the tax rate will decrease from $20.01 to $13.32 but the amount you pay will stay the same at $8,000 because you are now paying $13.32 x 600 (i.e. the assessed value of your property in thousands).