Middletown CT, fight a 40 percent tax increase 2023

[Account Closed]

Hi all,

I have a single family home I purchased in June 2021 for 200k.

Aside from cleaning up the yard, painting, and new water heater there have been no improvements.

I recently got a letter that my taxes are going up as they believe the property to be worth 225k as of June 2022. 

For Middletown Ct that is quite a market value increase year over year. I checked the town card (it’s right) and the mill rate is unchanged. It’s just the valuation.

If I don’t fight this valuation, I am paying taxes on a higher assessed value than what I bought it for a year ago (they do 5 year assessments) and it’s effectively a 40 percent increase in taxes vs 2017. I feel they should use the transaction value still.

I plan to fight with the fact that the market value was set a year ago and I have similar transactions that are lower from Refin this year and some had more bedrooms!

Anyone in the Middletown ct area ever successfully repeal this stuff?

If not no worries, I will appeal and write back here to tell you all about the experience for the next Middletown ct person! This way I can contribute to this knowledge center.

[Samuel Eddinger]

@Account Closed - that's not how this works.

Both of you are welcome to contest the assessments.  I also just got mine from Middletown and am looking at all of them to see which and how many I want to contest.

In CT, the assessment is used to generate the total grand list.  This is the sum of all the personal property (Car and real estate) in the town.  At this point, they establish the total town budget.  The Mil rate is set at Total town budget / Grand List.  If the grand list grows and the town budget doesn't grow, then the mil rate would go down and your tax would not increase.

With the evaluations going up, this will be a year that the towns push the budget's higher so you will see an increase.  I'm guessing that it will be something like 10% to 20% but definitely not 40%.

The one caveat on this is that for bigger buildings, the assessment is based on income approach, not market approach so they may not be getting assessed as high as the market approach.  In those cases, the taxes could redistribute from larger buildings to smaller buildings (4 units and below).

I own a lot in Middletown and surrounding areas and would be happy to have a conversation with either of you if needed so you know how to play the game.