PORTLAND, Maine — Hundreds of homeowners in Portland are appealing their new property values after the city finished its revaluation.
The city tax assessor, Christopher Huff, said the last revaluation was in 2006, resulting in a 77% increase in the city's overall tax value. Home, commercial property, and land values are increasing as a result. He said the average residential property increased 82%.
People whose properties increase in value more than 77 percent will pay that commensurate percentage more in taxes. Those whose values increase less than 77% will pay less.
"Obviously the market today in Portland is vastly different today than what it was in 2006 and that accounts for some of those larger increases in values that we've seen," Huff said.
The revaluation is a snapshot in time, showing the market value of homes, commercial properties, and land as of April 1, 2020.
The city looked back at 45 months of sales dating back to April 2017 to determine new property values, and the taxes people will have to pay on those.
Maine requires cities and towns to do revaluations every 10 years.
Huff said previous Portland City Councils discussed revaluations, but never voted on one. In 2018, the council finally approved one.
"Since we were out of compliance with Maine state standards, we had to do this revaluation," Huff said. "One of the things we built into this project was tools and technology to be able to do these in more frequent intervals so we don't have these wild swings in value. If we can maintain doing re-vals or updates of values every three, four, five years, I think everybody—the city and taxpayers—will be certainly better off for it."
The biggest property tax increases are for properties on the peninsula, Huff said.
"That's what we would expect because sale prices on the peninsula over the past year have increased dramatically," Huff said.
People can appeal their new values. The deadline for an informal appeal is July 21.
It also may affect renters. The city enacted a rent control ordinance in 2021, but exemptions include property tax rate increases.
"Tax rate rent adjustment: if Portland’s property tax rate changes, a landlord may increase rent by the same amount that the tax rate increased," a city FAQ document reads.
"The tax rate is estimated to decrease 42% from $23.31 to $13.49, and we anticipate this will go down even further by the time everything is set and finalized by the end of the summer," Huff wrote in an e-mail.