Welcome to the world of equity taxation. What town are we looking at here?

You can forget about trying to lower your taxes by downsizing because that is not a factor.

A lot of MA towns have absolutely absurd requirements around building codes. It's totally possible that the town sees a lot as "single family lot" and values them about the same, especially if it's impossible by town law to further subdivide and build more than 1 single family home on the lot.

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How close to the market value of the lot is your assessment?

Does your neighbors lot have easements or other restrictions? That would make sense if he can't use half the property for it to be valued less. That or the town is figuring that there is a fixed cost to service each parcel and divides it over the amount of land each parcel has. As long as its zoned as single residential use they know its going to be relatively fixed cost

That’s a good question. The overall assessment value of the property is certainly closer, but I don’t know just about the lot value. I’m not sure where I could find a comp

No easement. It’s common across the whole neighborhood. I was trying to get apples to apples comparisons, so I did several throughout the neighborhood

Right? Smaller lot equals the same tax as the large lot. North Reading. It’s pricing me out of being able to stay here when I retire.

Lol you OWN LAND, in this economy? Wild.

There is a house on it. The town breaks down our taxes by the lot value and the structure value for your total tax amount.

Lol you're taking my comment too seriously. I'm literally just surprised that you own it.

Sounds like a typical NIMBY tactic to prevent "high-density" (wink wink) housing by making small lots more expensive.

Oh it wasn't clear from your narrative that there is also a house on the lot and you're specifically worried about the land vs structure part of the assessment.

As long as the total value of the assessment is in the ballpark % of market value as your neighbors you don't have any shot of changing this. The assessor may just leave the land values at some minimum for years since the house is on that land and the breakdown between the two isn't relevant you your taxes.

The land, it seems to me, should be all the same. Not valued differently by size. A square foot is a square foot. The structure can vary because of many factors so I didn’t try to compare.

Land is valued based on its current use, so .5 acre vs 1 acre are equal in absolute value because each represents a single buildable lot. The price per sq ft isn’t the way to look at land valuations. They will take factors such as location etc into account so it won’t be identical.

What I'm saying is that the land vs structure split is probably not being properly assessed because it's not relevant since taxes are based on the total assessment and unless you have a special tax status for your land the split doesn't matter except in your head where you think you're being treated unfairly.

I can't assess if you are being treated unfairly however because what matters is the comparative total assessment value as a % of market value for your entire property compared to those of your neighbors.

It is extremely common for people to challenge their assessments and they have varying levels of success depending on the town or city (which you've also left out). Most towns have only 1 assessor, sometimes even part time.

That makes about the most sense. Thank you

Thank you. Now that I re read your comment along with another person’s comment it’s making a little more sense. The town is north reading, btw.

I bought in 2009 for dirt cheap. I never thought I would own a house in MA as a single person. Now I can’t afford to rent here!

If you plot the lot size (x axis) vs assessed value (y-axis), and fit a line to the (noisy) data, the y-intercept will tell you the implicit value of having a buildable lot of any size.

The pattern you see is totally typically. The marginal value of one additional sq ft is generally less than the average.

Example: let’s say you had 0.25 acres and your neighbor had 1 acre, and you were allowed to bargain for land on the border. Ignoring ability to pay, you’d probably value each marginal square foot more than your neighbor- they already have the space they need for a patio, swingset, chicken coop, yard.

Yeah, that's right when my family's house got foreclosed on. Happened to a lot of people.

This. If you scraped the existing house off the lot, what would the land be worth as a house lot. Square footage is not the appropriate way of measuring the value. I just looked at my abutters. If you made a land valuation model, it would look like:

Value = Base house lot value + variable part based on square footage

You go to the town for any available redress. The state has nothing to do with it.

Right. Not that I need it because I got a satisfactory answer from someone. What I was looking for would have been the next step to take should I not have gotten satisfaction from the town and needed to go beyond that. Thanks for your reply