Municipal Building, 41 South Main St., Hanover, NH / 603-640-3206 | ||||
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How Your Property is Assessed
The Assessor first reviews all the property to be assessed then values it.Accurate appraisals require constant searching and digging for significant facts to accumulate and analyze in order to estimate the fair market value of your property. What is market value? Finding the market value of your property involves discovering the price most people would pay for it in its present condition. It's not quite that simple, however, because the assessor has to find what this value would be for every property, no matter how big or how small. But the assessor's job doesn't stop there. Each year it has to be done all over again, because the market value of almost everything changes from one year to the next - as we all know. Towns in New Hampshire have traditionally not maintained assessments at 100% of market value on a yearly basis. Why have a property tax? Properties are appraised so that those of us who want the advantage of having schools, fire and police protection, and other public benefits (which means just about all of us), can absorb our fair share of the cost, in proportion to the amount of money our individual properties are worth. The property tax should be part of a well balanced revenue system. It is a more stable source of money than sales and income taxes because it does not fluctuate when communities have recessions. When the community spends your tax dollars on better schools, parks, and so on, your property values rise. Some of the windfall benefits you receive are recaptured by the property tax. How property is appraised. To find the value of any piece of property the assessor must first know what properties similar to it are selling for, what it would cost today to replace it, how much it takes to operate and keep it in repair, what rent it may earn, and many other dollar facts affecting its value, such as the current rate of interest charged AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAˇ¿ | |||