"Trophy Homes" for some could mean higher taxes for all
By Jack Maab Special to the Freeman January 18, 2004

HUDSON- The sale of what Columbia County assessors Association President Peter Ostrander calls "trophy homes" are driving down equalization rates across the county, a trend that could bring double digit increases in property assessments and an accompanying large jump in property taxes in 2005.

"We have a big problem. The market that is coming up primarily from New York City is driving everything crazy," Ostrander told the Board of Supervisors and members of the Assessors Association at a joint meeting on Wednesday. The problem comes about when individuals are willing to pay two to three times the appraised value for a home.

"Every supervisor will tell you $200,000 homes in their town are selling for $500,000," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Simmons.

Simmons says the problem affected only a few neighborhoods in a few towns over recent years, but now is affecting every community. Ostrander offered a measure of the breadth of the problem. In 2002. He said, Columbia County's 18 towns had equalization rates of 100 per cent , but only seven towns had that rate in 2003. The tax that disparity in equalization rate affects the most is the school tax, which is also the largest tax bill that property owners pay.

But Ostrander and Jerry Dye, of Buffalo basd consultanting firm TSL Inc., donÕt blame the buyers of the so called "trophy homes." The real culprit , they say, is the method being used by the state Office of Real Property to create the equalization rates. The trophy houses are worth what people are willing to pay, but they (state officials) are penalizing all the little houses by saying they should sell for big bucks, too," Ostrander said.

He added that the majority of non-trophy homes sell for close to their assessed values.

"A few properties are driving the market. We've become Hampton north. " he said. Some good news in this quagmire is that the county, when it takes on the state Office of Real Property Services over the issue, is not fighting state law but rather in-house procedure. "It's the method. It's relatively simple to chane if they want to ." Dye said.

One supervisor at Wednesday's meeting suggested making a loud and persistant noise in Albany to change the current situation. He suggested the county send representatives to monthly board meetings of the Office of Real Property Services. Simons noted that attending the board meetings could be difficult because they are held in various locations around the state. And getting the board to agree with the county is no guarantee that the problem will be fixed, Simons said.

He noted that county officials appeared before the board a number of years ago, with 14,000 pages of documentation that showed errors in equalization rates, and even though " the board agreed with us, they said...we still had to take (the Office of Real property Services) to court". The county did just that and won.