New assessment notices to be sent to Amherst, Williamsville property owners

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) - Property owners in Amherst and Williamsville will soon be getting their new assessment notices from the town, and many residents are bracing to see how much more they will be paying in taxes.

Those new notices will be arriving over the weekend or early next week.

These assessment notices will reflect the new full-value on properties throughout Amherst and Williamsville. This comes after the town approved a hike in the tax cap of 11.4 percent.

The town of Amherst has been updating property assessments for over 20 years. But a couple years ago, the town board adopted a resolution to bring property assessments to full market value.

For example, the town says a home that's currently assessed at $300,000 would now be assessed at $483,000. On the new notices, there will be a hypothetical estimate of the taxes based on last year's budget.

"When you receive your notice, we really want people to look at that new value and kind of ask themselves is this what we could sell our house for? If it's not, then, that's when you're going to want to take the next steps," said Emily Murphy, the Amherst assessor.

She's referring to challenging your assessment. Murphy says her office has been getting dozens of calls from residents about their taxes.

"Typically during a reassessment ,we're going to see about a third of the properties have a slight decrease in their tax bills, about a third will stay the same and then, about a third will see a bit of an increase in their tax bills," Murphy said.

For some perspective on how these new assessments will affect the housing market in Amherst and Williamsville, we heard from Deb Kilbourn, a licensed real estate agent. She agrees the changes will price many out of the market.

"The losers are all the homeowners, the senior citizens, the young homeowners anyone, anyone even the people who have the houses in the nice, nice neighborhoods they can't afford $20,000 a year in taxes either," Kilbourn said.

As a reminder, Friday is the deadline for seniors to upgrade to the Enhanced Star tax exemption.

Property owners can challenge or contest their new property assessment. New assessments in Amherst and Williamsville will be finalized on July 1.

"It's a seller's market, because there's a housing shortage so that means that people are getting 10, 15 offers on every house and it's forcing the price of the home up, but with that with the higher taxes it's just going to make it so people are actually going to have to stay still," Kilbourn said, "Because they're locking into a 3.75 percent when they bought their house, now if they bought a new house they're going to have to pay a 7 percent plus higher in taxes, so it's not worth it, so people are just going to have to stay put and remodel and upgrade what they have already existing which is then going to increase the shortage even more."