Greenwich Homeowners in Conservation Zones
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PROPERTY TAX APPEAL PROCEDURE To be Filed by March 20, 2003 Pick up a Tax Appeal Form from Town Hall 2nd Floor or download one here http://www.greenwichct.org/Assessor/asBdAssessmentAppealForm.pdf. If you go to the Town of Greenwich website at www.greenwichct.org/Assessor/Assessor.asp you can link to the appeal form. Determine the size of your lot in square feet. You can gather this information from the tax records at Planning and Zoning or the Assessors office. If you cannot find this information quickly call 622-1250 as we have a database published by the P&Z that gives every lot and home size by address and can look it up fairly quickly. If you know the size of your lot in acres multiply that times 43,560 sq. ft/acre to get square feet of lot size. For example 2 acres equals 87120 square feet. Determine the Zone where you live and look up your lot size in the FAR Lookup Table You can use either the column for 98 FAR Amend or if you live in a conservation zone use the 9/02 P&Z FAR Conservation column. Alternatively, you can just multiply the Floor Area Ratio for your zone below before and after reenactment of the FAR in Jan. 2003. Prior FAR New FAR Conservation RA-4 None .0625 .0781 RA-2 None .09 .1125 RA-1 .15 .135 .155 R-20 .25 .225 .259 R-12 .35 .315 .362 R-7 .4 .36 .41 R-6 .6 .55 For example a two acre lot in the four acre zone would be the RA-4 Zone and have a buildable area of 5445 square feet. Or be calculated as 2 acres X 43560 sq. ft./Acre= 87120 sq.ft. 87120 sq. ft X .0625 RA4 FAR= 5445 sq ft. Now compare that to an equivalent size lot in the conforming size zone. For example if the two acre lot was in a two acre zone rather than the four acre zone you would look up in the RA-2 and determine that 7840 square feet could be built. SUBTRACT To Get the Buildable Difference Due to FAR 7840 minus 5445= 2395 square foot difference LOST Due to the FAR Multiply this time $250 to $300 per square foot equals $598,750 potential value lost due to loss of buildable square footage due to FAR. Request in your letter approximately one third of this value for allocation to the land. In this case that would be a REQUEST for ASSESSMENT REDUCTION to LAND of $199,583 Click on the Letter to go with Appeal button above to go to the next page to help you compose a descriptive letter to be submitted with your appeal. Also print out the Appraisers Letter to include with your appeal as a professional opinion regarding the loss of property value. ANOTHER EXAMPLE For an existing house in the R-12 zone For zones where FAR existed previously you can easily calculate the buildable area taken away by the regulation. In the R-12 zone on a 10,000 square foot lot previously you could build 10,000 X .35= 3500 sq ft and now you can build 10,000 X .315= 3150 sq ft. for a difference of 350 sq ft at a value of $250 per sq. ft. is $87.500. Divide this by 1/3 to 1/2 for the allocation to land so for example $87500/3 would be $29166 that could be used for appeal. DONT FORGET ATTICS and BASEMENTS Add in the impact of the attic and basement definition changes that occured in April of 2002 after the 2001 revaluation and also took value. To do this add up any basement area ( finished or unfinished) and attic area with 7 foot headroom accessed by a walk up stair (finished or unfinished). If for example these numbers come to 1,000 sq. ft. multiply this by $250 per sq.ft for a total of $250,000 value lost. Add this to whatever value was taken by the FAR changes themselves. $29166 + $250,000= $279,166 that can be used for appeal. YOU CAN ALSO APPEAL BASED ON A COMPARISON OF YOUR HOME TO OTHERS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD OR REGION. LOOK THESE UP IN THE ASSESSORS OFFICE. GOOD LUCK and Please Join the Concerned Homeowners. WE ARE WORKING FOR YOU. If you get a tax reduction please consider donating a portion of that to the Concerned Homeowners to support this service and the legal appeal of the FAR that has been filed. Thank you. If you have any questions please call 622-1250.
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