Should I grieve my Long Island property tax assessment?
A one-minute self-check. Five questions, then we score the likely outcome and tell you whether a grievance is worth your time. Filing is free and firms work on contingency, so the main cost is the time to gather comparable sales.
Not legal or financial advice. This quiz is a rule of thumb built on common industry heuristics. Outcomes depend on your evidence, the grievance process and your county or town assessor. For high-stakes cases, talk to a grievance firm or a tax certiorari attorney.
Question 1 of 5
1. Compared to recent sales of similar homes in your neighborhood, your assessment is…
2. When was the property last assessed or reassessed?
3. Do you have evidence that supports a lower value? (Comparable sales, defects, etc.)
4. Have you been issued any building permits in the last 3 years for additions, finished basements, decks, etc.?
5. Where is the property?
Your result
How we score: each answer adds points toward a likely-success score from 0 to 15. Above 9 usually means a grievance is clearly worth it; 5 to 9 depends on your evidence; below 5 suggests it probably isn’t worth pursuing. The rubric reflects aggregate experience from grievance firms and town boards, not advice for any one property.
What makes a grievance succeed
Grievance success on Long Island tracks four things, roughly in this order:
- Evidence. Three recent comparable sales beat a general sense that the home is over-assessed.
- Time since the last reassessment. Nassau reassesses every year, so even small changes matter; some Suffolk towns lag five to ten years, where over-assessment can be large.
- No recent major improvements. If you finished a basement that isn’t on the roll yet, a grievance can backfire when the assessor catches up.
- Local norms. Nassau’s ARC accepts about half of well-supported grievances. Suffolk varies by town board.
What a grievance can and can’t change
- Can: lower your assessed value. A 10% cut takes about 10% off the bill, every year until the home is reassessed.
- Can’t: change the tax rate (set by school, town and county budgets), trigger a reassessment of your neighbors, or refund past years unless you file a SCAR petition within strict deadlines.