BEACON FALLS — The town has hired an independent revaluation company to review the assessments of homes in Chatfield Farms.
Residents of Chatfield Farms, a community for people 55 and older, are facing significant tax increases following a recent revaluation done by Appraisal Resource Group. The majority of residents in the town saw a drop in their home values, but home values in Chatfield Farms increased.
Due to the revaluation, the town’s 2016 net grand list decreased $25.1 million, or 5.12 percent, to $464.4 million. The mill rate had to be adjusted up to make up for the loss in tax revenue, before calculating for higher municipal and school expenses. The higher mill rate on top of increasing assessments led to tax increases of thousands of dollars for some Chatfield Farms residents who subsequently voiced displeasure with the revaluation and questioned whether it was done correctly.
Assessor June Chadderton said in a previous interview because 2016’s revaluation didn’t require a full physical inspection, the new appraisals were based on sales, and there was no different criteria for Chatfield Farms.
First Selectman Christopher Bielik said the town hired the Cheshire-based Baron Appraisal to review the revaluation that was done on homes in Chatfield Farms. The town budgeted $5,000 for the review, he said. The money came from funds left over from the previous revaluation, he said.
Bielik said Baron Appraisal will only review the revaluation of homes in the Chatfield Farms development.
This is a problem for some Chatfield Farms residents.
“A lot of people think this new reval that is only happening within the Chatfield Farms community won’t be unbiased. To be fair it would also have to include homes outside Chatfield Farms,” Chatfield Farms resident Ed Groth said.
Groth said many residents of Chatfield Farms don’t understand why their home values went up when home values around the town decreased.
“It just doesn’t compute for us that 98 percent of the rest of the town went down and we are the only community that went up in value,” Groth said.
During the last full physical revaluation in 2011, the then-developer of Chatfield Farms, Whyndham Homes, was in bankruptcy. Roads and detention ponds were incomplete and sidewalks hadn’t been built. The homeowners association was managing a partially finished construction site, there was litigation by trade contractors and bank loans precluded anyone from being able to sell their homes, current developer Matthew Gilchrist said in a previous interview.
A home at 7 Dogwood Lane sold for $430,000 in 2015, but the town only appraised it at $326,000. This year, the appraisal jumped to $407,000.
While some houses might be selling for more money, Groth said the houses built in the first phase of the project are selling for less than the owners paid.
“It seems like the company that did the reval is only looking at new sales. They load it up with amenities and run the price up,” Groth said. “If every resale of an existing home drops in value by tens of thousands of dollars it doesn’t make sense someone could come in and say the value of your house went up.”
Although residents are angry, for now all they can do is wait on the results of the review and appeal the assessments next year.
Once the review is done, Bielik said Chatfield Farms residents will be able to use it to argue their case to the Board of Assessment Appeals in March and April. However, it is too late to have any effect on their taxes this year, he said.
“The review that is taking place right now will assist those members in preparing a case should they have one,” Bielik said.
Groth said the fact that the town won’t reconsider the revaluations for this year will hurt people on fixed incomes.
“That is not acceptable. People in here are just average middle class people who sold their existing homes to move into here,” Groth said. “There is a perception in town that everybody in Chatfield Farms is wealthy. Most are just average people looking for a safe, quiet environment to live out their golden years.”
