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• Cap?
  
• Who's complaining?
• Property tax squabbling in Greenwich related to voting address;
  
• Here is a link to a recent Regional Plan Association study:  http://www.rpa.org/pdf/RPAproptax050206.pdf
• Connecticut studies Property Tax periodically, too:  click here.
  

The owner of a home on Palmers Hill Road in Stamford paid $10,437 in real estate taxes this year -- nearly twice as much as his neighbors on the Greenwich side of the street paid on a comparable size property.

The tax rate in Stamford is nearly three times more than in Greenwich, so it's not surprising that four times as many Stamford residents said they pay too much in taxes.

Eighty percent of Stamford residents surveyed in an Advocate/Greenwich Time poll earlier this year said they pay "too much" in property taxes compared with 19 percent in Greenwich and 77 percent in Norwalk.

The overwhelming majority of Greenwich residents -- 74 percent -- said the amount they pay in taxes each year is "just right."

The poll was conducted by the University of Connecticut's Center for Survey Research and Analysis earlier this year. About 500 residents -- 167 each in Stamford, Greenwich and Norwalk -- were asked 59 quality of life questions in the telephone survey.

Norwalk Finance Director Tom Hamilton said it's not surprising Greenwich residents paying $11 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed value would be more pleased than their counterparts in Norwalk and Stamford, who pay $27 to $29 per $1,000.

Looking at how much Greenwich residents pay as a percentage of the market value of their homes and their ability to pay, Hamilton said Greenwich's taxes are probably the lowest in the state.

Real estate taxes are determined by the tax rate, known as the mill rate, and the assessed value of the property.

But because of the astronomical home values in Greenwich -- where the average sales price of a home is just more than $2 million -- in actual dollars, most Greenwich residents pay more than residents of Stamford and Norwalk. On average, Greenwich property owners pay about $11,000 a year in taxes compared with an average of $5,500 per homeowner in Stamford and $5,100 in Norwalk.

Greenwich residents in modest homes would pay considerably more each year if their houses were elsewhere.

For example, the owner of a small three-bedroom ranch on a quarter-acre lot on Havemeyer Lane in Greenwich pays $2,900 a year in real estate taxes -- almost $500 less than the owner of an almost identical 1,000-square-foot home on Stillwater Avenue in Stamford.

Condominiums also tend to be taxed higher in the more urban communities. According to recent sales data, the taxes on a two-bedroom 1,300-square-foot condominium in Stamford and Norwalk are about $3,900 a year compared with about $2,400 a year for a similar size unit in Greenwich.

Jim Troy, a Stamford real estate agent who ran for the Board of Finance last year because he said he saw Stamford's rising property taxes becoming a turn-off for prospective home buyers, said his clients sometimes buy in wealthier towns such as New Canaan and Darien, where they pay less in taxes compared to the value of the home.

A listing he provided for a Cape Cod style-house on the market in the Riverside section of Greenwich for $799,000 placed the taxes at $3,500 a year, whereas the taxes on a similar-size Cape in Stamford listed at $589,000 are $5,000 a year.

Joseph Lobaido, the Palmers Hill Road resident paying nearly twice as much in taxes as his Greenwich neighbors, said he knew about the tax situation when he bought his 3,000-square-foot contemporary-style home in 1999.

"We really didn't want to come (to Stamford) because we saw the difference in taxes," he said.

Lobaido said he was so put off by Stamford's taxes that he and his wife looked in Greenwich for six months, getting dragged from house to house with outdated 1950s-era kitchens, before giving Stamford a look.

The choice, he said, was to pay a lot for a house in Greenwich in hopes they would get it back when they sold it, or buy a lower-priced home in Stamford and pay much higher taxes. Either way, they'd spend a lot of money.

The 61-year-old pharmacist said he was tired of working on houses, and they ultimately decided their money was better spent on a home in Stamford that needed no major repairs.

Randall Avery, a Rowayton resident on Norwalk's Board of Estimate and Taxation, said the dissatisfaction with property taxes in Norwalk is closely linked to dramatic tax increases residents have seen over the past four years. Because Norwalk delayed its 1993 tax revaluation until 1999, residents were taxed on the 1983 values of their homes until the new assessments went into effect in 2000.

Back in 1998, the average Norwalk homeowner was paying about $3,000 a year in taxes; while today that same homeowner is paying $5,000 to $6,000, Avery said.

"It's obvious why people are dissatisfied," he said. "These type of radical increases are not expected when municipal spending is increasing an average of 3 percent or 4 percent a year."

But city spending is not the culprit, Avery said.

Norwalk homeowners are paying a larger share of taxes today than in 1983 because the tax burden has shifted from commercial real estate to residential real estate, he said. Twenty years ago, 40 percent of the city's taxes were paid by homeowners. Today, Avery said, homeowners shoulder about 65 percent of Norwalk's tax burden.

In hindsight, he said, it may have been a mistake to load up Route 1 with big-box retail stores. Had office buildings gone up in their place, the city would have reaped more tax dollars because, unlike retail, office buildings also pay personal property taxes on computers and other equipment.

John Scannell, who's paying $15,420 a year in real estate taxes on his 4,900-square-foot home in the Shippan section of Stamford, said the amount he pays does not bother him as much as what he is getting -- or not getting -- for his money.

"The city services are pretty good. I don't mind paying a little extra for good service," he said. "But the education is important to a lot of people and I don't think we're getting bang for our buck there."

Scannell said it makes him angry to see Stamford's public schools get about $370 per student in education cost sharing grant funds from the state each year -- just a little more than the wealthier surrounding towns. Greenwich gets $246 per student in ECS funding, New Canaan gets $236 and Darien gets $233.

Scannell said it would be more equitable to share education expenses countywide rather than leaving the poorest, urban communities to fend for themselves.

"It seems like there should be a system in which wealth is transferred from wealthier parts of the state to other areas," he said.

A founding member of a Stamford taxpayer's association informally known by its Web site's address, stamfordtaxpayers.org, Scannell said it's obvious the wealthiest towns are a better bargain than the big cities, if you can afford to buy in.

"You didn't need a survey to know that people in Greenwich are getting a good deal and people in Stamford and Norwalk are not," he said.

MIAMI - Teri Vasarhelyi and her husband thought they would be able to afford a bigger house with more land two years ago when they left San Francisco, the most expensive home market in the country.
 
They figured they found a good deal in a two-bedroom house in the peaceful, leafy Coconut Grove area for $440,000 in March 2004. But the shock came when their first property tax bill came a few months later — more than $9,200 a year, nearly double what they paid in their old home.

"That's an awful lot of money, on top of your mortgage, to find that cash," said Vasarhelyi, 35, who's taking time off from her advertising career to raise their baby.

Many people are running into similar problems, a side effect of the real estate boom. As home prices skyrocket, property taxes are also going up, especially in hot markets like Florida, California and the Northeast.

"Young families simply can't afford to live here. It's very difficult for police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses," said Lori Parrish, the property appraiser in nearby Broward County, who has pushed for more property tax breaks.

First-time home buyers are especially running into trouble as wages adjusted for inflation haven't kept pace with real estate prices, and elderly residents on fixed incomes who have lived in their homes for decades are also struggling to pay ever-increasing taxes.

The national average annual property tax collection was $971 per person in 2002-2003, up 18 percent from $822 five years earlier, according to the latest figures available from the Tax Foundation, a research organization in Washington. The median home price nationwide rose to $170,000 in 2003 from $128,400 in 1998, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The most expensive states for property taxes were in the Northeast, with New Jersey topping out at $1,872 per person in 2002-2003. The cheapest state was Alabama at $329 per person.

While rising property taxes in theory should slow down the real estate market, that hasn't happened for two key reasons: "The popular belief that real estate is the best investment and the American willingness to spend a remarkably high fraction of their disposable income on housing," said foundation spokesman Bill Ahern.

Governments are still sensitive to complaints from homeowners. At least 48 states have tried to give homeowners relief from rising property taxes, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The methods include tax freezes, restricting property taxes to a percentage of the home's market value and caps on how much a home's assessed value can increase. Many states are considering expanding property tax relief.

But local governments are also wary of cutting back on what they collect — they get more than 95 percent of all property taxes. Altogether, American businesses and home-owners paid $296.7 billion in property taxes in 2002-2003, up from $279.1 billion in 2001-2002, according to the latest data from the U.S.     Census Bureau. Those numbers likely climbed even faster recently along with record-high home prices.

Property taxes pay for everything from schools and roads to police and fire departments. While they usually are collected by local governments, states generally write the laws that govern them.

"States are interested in keeping property taxes manageable at the same time they're balancing the delivery of public services demanded by citizens," said Bert Waisanen, fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Property tax relief varies widely from state to state, and even within them. A 2002 report by the legislative conference said that states are walking a tightrope to ensure that tax burdens are fair.

"(T)he relief provided to some may come at the expense of others," the report said.

California was a pioneer in easing the burden of property taxes. In 1978, voters there passed Proposition 13, which capped the increase in a home's taxable value at 2 percent a year until it is sold. It also limits a homeowners property tax to 1 percent of market value. Many other states followed with similar breaks, even though California's recurring budget crisis has been partly blamed on the initiative.

Forty-eight states also give home-owners a homestead exemption or credit, which allows them to deduct a certain amount from their home's taxable value.

But those rules aren't enough to keep taxes level.

It is also becoming more difficult for people to move because they usually lose out on property tax breaks when they do. For example, the previous owner of Vasarhelyi's house paid less because the increases in assessed values are capped in Florida at a maximum of 3 percent a year. But once the house is sold, that limit is lifted.

So what options do people have when the taxman comes calling?

"The biggest thing that any individual home-owner can do is to make sure that they aren't overassessed. The errors that take place in assessing properties are rampant," American Homeowners Association president Richard J. Roll said.

Some common errors are improper calculation of square footage and incorrect number of bathrooms or bedrooms, he said.  Only 2 percent of homeowners have challenged their assessment, but many more should because about 70 percent of those who do receive a reduction, Roll said.

"There are often tremendous disparities for no apparent reason," he said.