Sour market prompts request for reval delay
Not enough 'comps' to do job right, officials say
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
Brick Township officials are hoping for a breather if the county grants their request to delay the revaluation now under way.

Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis wants to put off the process for another year because of current real estate market conditions.

"Prices are still falling," he said. "There are no sales taking place. We have to protect the residents."

Officials plan to ask Ocean County Tax Administrator Lawrence Ozzie Vituscka to grant permission to keep the revaluation numbers off the books for now, Township Administrator Scott M. Pezarras said.

Pezarras, township TaxAssessor Frederick Millman and revaluation company officials agree the extension is needed because there are simply not enough "comps," or comparative sales data, to do the revaluation properly.

"There's no doubt in my mind the sales data is diminishing," Pezarras said. "The township had 1,500 sales in 2006, 871 in 2007 and only 600 sales projected for 2008, if the first two months of 2008 are any indication."

A property revaluation is driven by the statistical data from comparative sales, said Pezarras, who is also the tax assessor for Keyport, Ocean Gate and Lavallette.

"The bigger the sample you have, the better your revaluation is," he said. "If you don't have data, you are basically just going by your gut. Sometimes you have to make a judgment call, because there is just no data out there."

Setting new property tax assessments with so little data could lead to "masses of appeals" from property owners down the line, Pezarras said.

There are no real estate sales in some sections of the township, he said.

"You are going to be setting values with not a lot of sales data to hang your hat on," Pezarras said. "In some cases, you don't even have any sales in a particular neighborhood."

The normal procedure in asking for a revaluation delay is for the township tax assessor and Appraisal Systems Inc., the revaluation company the township hired in 2006, to notify the county tax administrator they want to delay the procedure, he said.

"They may simply write a letter explaining the reasons why an extension is needed, or in some cases, they may have to appear before the county tax board to state their case," Pezarras said. "It's either granted or denied. None of that has taken place yet. The township of Brick is planning on sending the letter. They called the administrator to see if it can be handled with a letter."

The township's last revaluation was in 1992. Property valuation includes the area and particular neighborhood where properties are located. Appraisal Systems analyzes comparable sales going back two to three years.

Appraisers analyze how much it would cost to rebuild and what the market value is for similar properties in the same neighborhood when setting a value. Revaluations of commercial properties are also based on how much income the business generates, Appraisal Systems President Ernest Del Guercio Sr. said during a presentation at the Dec. 11 Township Council meeting.

Original plans called for the new property revaluations to be reflected in the 2009 tax bills.

Company inspectors will continue with their visits to residential and commercial properties in town. The township is asking for a delay in when the values are set, Pezarras said.

Asking for a revaluation delay is "kind of a Catch-22," he said.

"If the market were appreciating substantially, you could make the same argument," Pezarras said. "I'm a little more leery of the bottoming of the market. The last three years, that's not a typical trend. There are increased foreclosures, bankruptcies, recessionary times. These are things that have me thinking it might not be a good time. You don't want to deal with masses of appeals."

Acropolis first asked for a delay in July 2006, when he was a township councilman, because he said the real estate market was down.

The Township Council voted 6-0 in November 2006 to award the $1.46 million contract to Appraisal Systems Inc.

Both Toms River and Manchester Township officials asked for and received permission to delay their revaluations, Pezarras said.

The next meeting of the Ocean County Board of Taxation is slated for April 2, he said.