Case Law Summaries

Centorino v. Tewksbury Township

• Opinion Date: December 27, 2001
• Real Property Law
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TAXATION; ASSESSMENTS—It is impermissible spot assessment for a tax assessor to single out a property for reassessment solely because of its sale price.

After receiving a copy of a deed abstract informing him of the sale of a house and the sale price of the property, a municipality’s tax assessor reassessed the property. The assessor alleged that its computer program showed a vast discrepancy between the price of the house and its assessment. Therefore, the assessor reviewed the property’s prior assessment, consulted the selling brokers, and viewed the exterior of the property while driving by. The assessor also claimed to have relied on the sales of comparable properties and to have consulted the multiple listing service data. Lastly, the assessor claimed to have reviewed the property record card for the house in question, but there was a substantial question as to whether the card in question had been lost before he began the review process. Essentially, the assessor claimed that his examination of the house indicated that it was somehow wrongly listed as a “class 18 residence,” which is defined as one using “good quality materials and workmanship.” Instead, the assessor thought it should have been listed as a “class 20 residence,” which meant one of mansion quality. When the matter reached the Tax Court, that court held that the assessor “did not utilize the sales price in any way to set the assessment of the subject property and did not single out this property ... [for an] increase ... solely because it was sold.” In doing so, it accepted the municipality’s contention “that a correction of a mistake in class category meant there was no impermissible spot assessment, even though the sale brought the property to the assessor’s attention.” A New Jersey Supreme Court case, West Milford v. Van Decker, 120 N.J. 354 (1990) “scrutinized the practice of assessing only recently sold properties without appraising similar properties in the same class that were not the subject of sale.” That case holds that “under no circumstances can appraised valuation of property be increased merely because it has been sold.” In this case, the assessor could not testify as to the difference between a “class 18” residence, and a “class 20” home. “Where [an] assessor’s appraisals of the differences between these classes was so obviously subjective and discretionary, and not readily discernable, the tax assessor must establish additional objective proofs as to the property in question, and in relation to other properties in the neighborhood, in order to rebut the presumption of validity of” a prior County Tax Board judgment and “to justify his statement that the subject property was not singled out solely on the basis of its sale.” The Court held that no such proof existed in the record. To the Court, it appeared “that what occurred here was that the assessor really reassessed the [subject] property and singled it out for such treatment because of its sale price.” As a result, the Court found this case to present a clear example of spot assessment discrimination and ordered that the assessment be reinstated to the amount in place prior to the sales transaction in question.

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