Property value reevaluation will affect April bills

The Board of Assessors announced that the town will be undergoing a reevaluation of property values, which will impact property taxes.

Every five years, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue requires a reevaluation of the property values in a town to ensure that the towns are correct in their assessments. 

The chair, Kevin Santos, explained that they are constantly checking and verifying the property values they have in the system but it is required by the state that the state also verifies there are no inconsistencies. 

An inconsistency is when a listed property value is outside of a 5% range of what the actual property value is. 

The town has a contract with Vision, a government agency that verifies assessments, who will be going around town to review. Vision will be going through the records and doing field reviews through April. 

Inconsistencies can happen when houses are upgraded without permits, meaning the town does not update the property value when the property value was changed. 

The assessment will be affecting property taxes. The billing season is split into four quarters, with the first bill being from July to September, the second being October to December, the third being January to March and the fourth being April to June. 

Usually the increase is split across the third and fourth quarter bills in the new year, but this year the increase will only be in the fourth quarter bill. 

This means the first bill of 2027 will be the same as the past bill but the second bill will be much higher.

There will also be no veteran or senior exemption on the bill until the fourth bill.