Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 22
Now | don’t think we are talking enough about some of the issues, the software stuff is great, you are nailing
that, you are on the right page. | think we can’t forget that all of this software stuff has to generate an interface
for the public to be able to access what we would like to access. Please don’t forget about us, property cards,
MLS stuff, sales searches so we can do better abatements. But your assessors, when we talk about permits,
you know the bottom line, | think we are missing a good number of permits, we are just missing them, we don’t
go. Ok? So that’s a problem. MLS adjusting, you know, we are missing a bunch of homes on MLS adjusting,
| don’t care if you put a little 8 in the column the 8 is there and you flip the card over and nothing is written. And
it may be that there was nothing to change, but there should be something there. | can tell you when | look at
the MLS pictures, | go — Oh we should’ve changed stuff. It just looks like we threw an 8 in a column and never
really looked at the pictures. And how we use those pictures, you know that | have a serious reservation about
the sales chasing issue. And | think we have been doing that type of assessing strongly on sold properties that
we have quantitative and we have qualitative data we can look at and we are being way too hard on the
qualitative data. And we are changing those sold properties more aggressively than we are on permitted work
and we are not even doing it to all sold properties, we are doing to select. That’s not acceptable to me.
Now right now my observation is they are not MLS correcting houses at all, there is quite a slew of them that
have been sold since November that all have needs review in the column and they are not using the pictures
they are not doing anything. | don’t know if they gun-shy, | don’t know if they are holding back but some of
them; I'll give you an example are homes that in the past they would correct that, but | think they got to sit there
and not correct. They have a home that is totally rebuilt, remodeled, permits pulled, addition put on, gutted, they
go in in April and they go in with a clean card and they re-assess the whole property, it’s all re-done which is
what they had to do, it’s like a new build. They reassess it, they do it just fine, they do their work the way they
are supposed to, | go down, | can see it, it’s perfect, it is stapled. They come up with an assessment for this
property, $470,000.00. Then six weeks later it goes on the market, it has stayed one the market and it sold in
December, ok? What does it sell for? $560. Alright? The assessment and the price are off. Now ithas a
“needs review” stamp on it. It has a “needs review’ for 3 months. In my opinion, you don’t touch that. You’re
done. You looked at the property, you ran your model, your model produced evaluation, that’s how your model
works. What it tells me is that your model isn’t very good because your permit tables haven’t been updated,
because your square footage build for new construction isn’t that good or additions. But that’s what your model
is.
So if you go to that house now based on the sale price and you say — Oh the year 2000 build | put on that old
house, I’m going to make it 2010 now and I’m going to change the 3 bathrooms to excellent from good; and I’m
going to change kitchen to excellent. And | can drive up another $40,000.00 or $50,000.00 grand out of that.
You are only doing that because of the sales price. Stop. To me you did the best you could because that’s
what your model showed. Because if that house hadn’t sold, and that house had somebody living in it and they
had walked in and done that card, that would be the assessment, that would really be the assessment for the
person living there. So you have to be careful how you use the sales data. And we need a lot of retraining on
that. | think that is very, very important.
| Know there is more in my head and | am tired and | think you are too so | am going to stop here. | appreciate
the work that’s been done, | really do. But! don’t want to lose sight of some of the important stuff going on there
when we are creating valuation. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you. You can speak, name and address for the record please?
Laura Colquhoun My name is Laura Colquhoun, | live at 30 Greenwood Drive in Nashua. | am going to preface
it by saying | am not a public speaker. However | do want to say | thank you very much for explaining the
permits. | now realize how Nashua failed me. | moved in here and | am doing an abatement but that’s beside
the point. | had a gas leak for 4 years and called in 3 plumbers they couldn't find it, finally had the utility
company come in and they realized it was a cracked pipe underneath the water heater. Not happy about that.
