Delco re:View Winter 2020 - 16

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The Delaware County
Reassessment
is Coming!
By Joseph Patrick O'Brien, Esquire

I

n March of 2017, the Delaware
County Court of Common
Pleas ordered a Countywide
Reassessment for every real estate
tax parcel in Delaware County. The
Countywide Reassessment will be
effective for the 2021 tax year with
the stated goal of raising each tax parcel's assessment to 100% of
its current fair market value.
The most frequently asked question is whether a property's
assessment and its value are the same. Until the Reassessment
is effective in Delaware County, property assessments are a
percentage of a property's actual value. For example, in 2020 a
given property's assessment is supposed to be 56.4% of its actual
value (56.4% being the 2020 Delaware County Common Level
Ratio "CLR"). In 2019, assessments were supposed to be 58.1%
of a property's value in Delaware County. In 2021, the year of
the reassessment, each property's assessment will be raised to
100% of its actual value.

Why Did The Court Order The Reassessment?
One of the main problems with the assessment system
in Delaware County (and across the state) is that over time

16 | Winter 2020

properties in different areas increase or decrease in value at
different rates. Research has shown that as these values change
over time only about a third of all properties in a given County
have assessments that are reflective of their actual value.
Meaning that a third of properties are under assessed, i.e.
paying too little in taxes, while a third of properties are over
assessed and therefore paying too much in taxes in relation to
the property's value. The Pennsylvania Constitution requires
that all taxes be "uniform" on the same subjects and seeing
as how Delaware County's last countywide reassessment was
conducted in 2000, it is no surprise that the wide variance of
assessments in relation to actual value led the Trial Court to
order a reassessment.
As a result, Delaware County has contracted with Tyler
Technologies Inc. to effect the reevaluation of all tax parcels
bringing assessments up to 100% of each property's actual
value. For over two years Tyler has been collecting data on the
205,000+/- tax parcels in Delaware County. Property owners
should have already received a preliminary report identifying the
particulars for each property including square footage, bedrooms,
bathrooms, etc. Beginning in mid-February Tyler will begin
sending informal notices with the new tentative property values.
The new assessments should be an accurate representation of the
fair market value for each property.
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