Delco: Reassessment to go into effect in 2021

A court-ordered reassessment of more than 206,000 properties in the county will be much different than the last assessment conducted in the 1990s, according to Delaware County Executive Director Marianne Grace.

“The last reassessment was the first ever conducted by the county and at that time, assessors were required to visit and inspect every single property,” Grace stated in a release.

But the county has maintained computer-aided mass appraisal software and information about property changes from municipalities since that time, Grace said, and therefore will not need to visit each of the 206,106 properties in Delaware County to conduct the reassessment ordered by Common Pleas Court Judge Charles B. Burr.

The order was the result of a pair of assessment appeals filed by local homeowners who were able to demonstrate a widespread lack of uniformity in tax assessments across the county, said Philadelphia attorney John J. Murphy III Tuesday.

The Pennsylvania Constitution specifically requires that “all taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.”

Pennsylvania allows counties to adopt either an annual valuation method or a “base method” of property valuation that uses a given property’s base year assessment as the basis for taxation in subsequent years. Delaware County has opted for the base method, last implementing 1998 as the base year in 2000.

But Murphy argued that this method ignores market fluctuations as well as new types of construction that could not properly be valued by 1998 data, resulting in uneven assessments that far outstripped allowable variations.

“We believe the reassessment is long overdue and this is the proper way to deal with the lack of uniformity within the county,” he said.

Delaware County has experienced above-average growth in property values since 2000 compared to regional and national trends, according to the release from the county, and rebounded well from the real estate crisis of the mid2000s. Real estate prices increased approximately 55 percent from 2007/2008 through 2014, the release said.

Murphy noted reassessments must be revenue neutral by law, however, so any potential increases in property valuations as a whole would be offset by a reduction in the millage rate.

“It is important for all property owners to realize that reassessment does not necessarily equate to a property tax increase,” said Grace. “The law prevents a local municipality, a school district or a county government from gaining a windfall for taxing authorities.”

The reassessment is expected to begin this year and will be implemented in January 2021, according to the release. Delaware County Council has pledged to keep residents informed about the process over the next four years, as well as how to resolve any issues that may arise.