Key takeaways

  • Many of us have wondered if assessments are increasing for everyone. About 26% of residential properties saw decreases in their assessed values between FY2020 and FY2021. (I’m defining residential properties as single families, condos, 2 and 3 families.)
  • Many of us have also wondered about how assessments have changed for local apartment buildings. Some of them saw big decreases between FY2020 and FY2021.
  • Finally, many of us have wondered about assessment changes for the local country club. Its assessed value decreased dramatically between FY2020 and FY2021.

Looking at the top and bottom 25 residential properites with changed assessments, some huge increases are due to incomplete construction in FY2020 that ended in FY2021. Likewise, some large decreases are due to construction started in FY2021.

I don’t have any guess right now as to why the assessed values of some of the apartment buildings and the country club would have decreased.

About this analysis and why I’m sharing it

This page includes a preliminary analysis of FY2020 and FY2021 (hereafter, FY20 and FY21) property assessment data. There are some limitations on the data, described below.

Given the data limitations, you might wonder why I’m sharing this analysis now. I give the following reasons:

  • I’m running for Town Meeting Member in Precinct 3 and want to get my name (Jason Ketola) out there. You can learn about me here. I’d be honored by your vote.
  • The dataset is mostly complete and still is interesting.
  • I’m interested to hear questions others would like me to look into and also to hear from any interested collaborators. I’m at jason@belmont-ma.info.

Limitations on the data

The data set analyzed is incomplete. It includes 7,481 residential properties (defined as single families, condos, 2 and 3-families), whereas there were 7,819 in FY20 and 7,896 in FY21 according to the assessment reports. The reason for the difference is data export issues. I have an open public records request for better data files, and once I get those files, I’ll update this analysis.

Summary of increases and decreases among residential properties

Of the 7,481 residential properties in the dataset:

  • The average assessment change was an increase of $38,034 (4.2%) in FY21 over FY20.
  • The median assessment change was an increase of $17,000 (1.8%) in FY21 over FY20.
  • 74% (5,541) saw increased assessments in FY21 compared with FY20.
  • 26% (1,940) saw decreased assessments in FY21 compared with FY20.

Among the 5,541 residential properties that saw increased assessments:

  • The average assessment increase was $75,298 (7.5%).
  • The median assessment increase was $56,000 (5.9%).

Among the 1,940 residential properties that saw decreased assessments:

  • The average assessment decrease was -$68,398 (-5.4%).
  • The median assessment decrease was -$54,000 (-4.1%).

Top and bottom 25 residential assessment changes in absolute dollars, mapped

  • Red means top 25 and blue means bottom 25.
  • Click pins to see associated data.
  • A couple of the top increases appear to be due to construction finished before the FY21 assessment.

Top and bottom 25 residential assessment changes as a percent of assessed value, mapped

  • Red means top 25 and blue means bottom 25.
  • Click pins to see associated data.
  • Again, a couple of the top increases appear to be due to construction finished before the FY21 assessment.

Some striking changes in non-residential assessments

  • The Belmont Country Club (181 and 171-181 Winter St.) saw a total decreased assessment value of -$10,636,500 (-30%). Note that BCC pays only a fraction of the property tax rate due to a 61B exemption for their having a golf course.
  • The Royal Belmont (275 Acorn Park Dr.) saw a total decreased asssessment value of -$36,799,000 (-25%).
  • Apartment buildings at 300 Trapelo Rd. and 43 Burnham St. saw descreases of -$843,000 (-17%) and -$601,000 (-17%), respectively.

Data notes

  1. I had to drop several hundred assessment entries due to bad data caused by exporting data from the PDFs provided by the town.
  2. I mapped “15 ST JAMES CT” to “855 CONCORD AVE” and “8 ST JAMES CT” to “905 CONCORD AVE”, because Google Maps doesn’t recognize St. James Court yet.