Pittsburgh resolves to reduce taxpayers' inflated property assessments.

Politics makes strange bed fellows. Pittsburgh's city council recently ordered its finance director to draft policies that protect taxpayers from assessment appeals by the city, and even to file appeals on taxpayers' behalf.

Unlike many states, Pennsylvania allows the three entities that levy real estate taxes (counties, schools and municipalities) to appeal annual real estate assessments, just as taxpayers do.

Taxpayers file appeals when they believe their property is over-assessed, in order to reduce their assessment and their real estate taxes.

When taxing authorities file annual appeals, they seek to increase assessments and taxes. The city of Pittsburgh has historically filed appeals following the sale of a property assessed at a lower value than the sale price. This practice, where taxing authorities essentially sue individual taxpayers (and voters) to increase real estate tax payments, is common in Western Pennsylvania.

In a strange twist, first-term city councilman Dan Gilman recently introduced legislation to limit the city's ability to file increase appeals and, in some cases, to even direct the city to file appeals to decrease property assessments. The resolution passed and the mayor signed the measure on Feb. 23.

The resolution starts off with two self-limiting provisions. First, it bars the city from appealing the assessment of a property for two years after the property sells. Second, the resolution prohibits the city from using a property's sale price as the basis for an appeal seeking an assessment increase.

These provisions restrict the city from doing what it is permitted to do by Pennsylvania statute, which states that "[Any county, city, . . school district . . which may feel aggrieved by any assessment of any property . . shall have the right to appeal" an assessment the same as the property's owner.

The resolution further limits the city to appealing a property's assessment once every three years. Pennsylvania's statute allows taxing authorities to appeal annually.

David "J.R." Sachs, president of A-1 Van Service recently battled Pittsburgh taxing authorities over his property's assessment, and believes the new resolution is a good idea.

After Sachs purchased three dilapidated buildings and contaminated land along the banks of the Allegheny River in 2013, the school district appealed his assessment, seeking an increase to the purchase price. Sachs saw his assessment mushroom from $489,800 to $540,000 following the appeal, while the assessments of neighboring properties without recent sale prices remained unchanged.

The new resolution "gives people a chance to invest in their properties and improve them before getting hit with a tax increase," Sachs says.

Perhaps most unusual is the resolution's requirement directing the city to generate a list of properties with assessments 50 percent or more greater than their market value, and to "appeal values downward on behalf of those owners." This provision turns current practice on its head.

In a taxpayer-initiated appeal seeking an assessment reduction, the city's legal department has historically defended the assessment and fought against reductions. Now, the city will be required to file appeals seeking reductions on behalf of taxpayers.

This last provision is not entirely unprecedented in Pittsburgh. In 2005, Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, conducted a countywide reassessment following a court mandate, releasing the new assessment figures but refusing to certify the assessment. Instead, the county resisted implementing the assessments in litigation that wound up in Pennsylvania's Supreme Court.

During this litigation, in April 2006, Allegheny County filed 11,000 appeals on behalf of taxpayers who saw their assessments rise since the prior reassessment in 2002 as a result of previous appeals by school districts or municipalities. Allegheny County brought these appeals to hearing and requested reductions. City and school district representatives appeared and defended the assessments.

The city's recent initiative may have unintended consequences, according to Pittsburgh lawyer, Michael I. Werner of ZunderWerner, LLP. Werner has extensive experience representing property owners in appeals of their property assessments. "When the county did the same thing in 2006, property owners were confused. In some instances, the owners did not want the county to file appeals on their properties," he says. "This put us in an odd position: Because the owner was not the appellant, we were unable to withdraw the appeals. The county was trying to help, but they inadvertently created new obstacles for many property owners."

"It is a noble thing they are trying to do, but it raises the question of whether a city employee, who does not know the specific property and who does not have an attorney-client relationship with the property owner, is in a position to properly represent that owner's interests," Werner says. "City-initiated appeals to reduce an assessment should only be filed at the request of the property owner."

The city's resolution also calls for its finance director to collaborate with the Pittsburgh school district and Allegheny County to implement and expand its new policies. Given the history, it seems unlikely that the school district will join the city, either in self-limiting its appeal rights or in filing appeals seeking lower assessments.

Pennsylvania school systems are strapped for cash due to the state legislature's budget impasse: lawmakers are more than eight months past deadline to pass the 2015-2016 budget, and many school districts have been forced to take out loans to meet operating expenses. Increasingly, school districts have become more aggressive in filing increase appeals as they seek new sources of revenue.

What happens next is open for debate. Even though Pittsburgh's mayor ratified the resolution on Feb. 23, one councilwoman introduced a measure on Feb. 22 to repeal it. The new proposal remains in committee. All assessment appeals for properties in Pittsburgh were due March 31, and hearings will begin in May and June.

Sharon DiPaolo is a partner in the law firm of Siegel Jennings Co., L.P.A., the Ohio and Western Pennsylvania member of American Property Tax Counsel, the national affiliation of property tax attorneys. She can be reached at sdipaolo@siegeltax.com.

Massive assessment hikes in New York City confirm that Mayor Bill de Blasio intends to extract as much revenue as possible from real estate, one of the city’s most important industries. This will kill the golden goose underlying the city’s economic recovery.

The city released its tentative assessment roll for the 2015-2016 tax year on Jan. 15, 2015, revealing painful and substantial increases in market value for both residential and commercial properties. The city pumped up the value of residential properties by almost 11 percent, while driving up commercial assessments by 12 percent over the prior tax year.

These increases are nearly double the rate of increase effected by last year’s final assessment roll, where residential market values increased by 6.6 percent and commercial market values increased by 7 percent over the 2013­-2014 roll.

The compound effect of year-after-year increases is a crushing burden to owners and tenants, but the higher end of the commercial property spectrum was particularly hard hit in the latest assessment roll. Owners of trophy office buildings saw their market values spike by more than 31 percent over the prior year’s values.

Even worse, owners saw the market value of luxury hotels soar almost 65 percent over the previous year’s values for assessment purposes. The city is rough-handling these properties with mounting harshness on both sides of the income and expense equation.

As a result of the new citywide assessments, real estate taxes in the city continue to substantially erode owners’ and developers’ bottom lines. Based on an analysis of the most re­cent assessment roll, the percentage of income now dedicated to paying real estate taxes is so high that the city has essentially become a silent partner in these properties — without the inher­ent risks of ownership, of course.

Consider the example of a non-exempt Manhattan residential property, with annual net operating income of $1 million before real estate taxes. Factoring in the current municipal residential tax rate and the prevailing capitalization rates used by the City Department of Finance, our hypothetical property yields a taxable assessed value of approximately $3.6 million and a property tax bill of about $463,000.

That burden means the property owner in this example is paying 46 percent of his or her net income in real estate taxes alone. Even analyzing the numbers based on a gross income of $1.4 million (based on the Department of Finance’s most recent expense guidelines), city property taxes account for more than one-third of the property’s overall expenses.

The situation is similarly oppressive for commercial properties, although they currently enjoy a lower property tax rate and higher capitalization rates than their residential counterparts — at least according to the most recent New York City Department of Finance Assessment Guidelines. Utilizing a similar analysis to the residential example above, the owner of a midtown Manhattan office building with a net operating income of $1 million would be paying just under 40 percent of its net operating income and almost 30 percent of its gross income in real estate taxes.

Based on the de Blasio administration’s ever-increasing crusade for revenue, owners and developers can expect this trend to continue. However, there are a number of avenues for them to pursue in order to ameliorate the effects of this rapid and seemingly endless rise.

While the release of the 2015-2016 assessment roll may have upset many taxpayers, it also marks an opportunity. That’s because the roll’s release begins the process under which owners and developers can initiate challenges to their property tax assessments. Based on the situation described above, it is likely that most of them will be doing exactly that.

Owners must challenge their assessments by filing applications and supporting documentation to the New York City Tax Commission. The owner’s representative must prepare a detailed analysis of conditions at the property, an analysis of leasing and vacancy, and a carefully prepared set of comparable properties to support the relief sought.

The Tax Commission is the administrative agency charged with annually hearing owners’ real estate tax challenges. The agency has the power to offer a reduction in the challenged assessment. Owners who are dissatisfied with the results of this Tax Commission review are entitled to challenge their assessments in New York State Supreme Court.

Joel R. Marcus is a partner in the New York City law firm of Marcus & Pollack LLP, the New York City member of American Property Tax Counsel (APTC), the national affiliation of property tax attorneys. He can be reached at jmarcus@marcuspollack.com.