Special Board of Aldermen 11-15-2021 Page 7
New Hampshire, we’re mandated by State Constitution and State Statute to revalue at least once every five years. So in
that five year period, we're watching the market. That's why we do that annual ratio report — the equalization study.
Again if we gets too far out of whack, then we do another revaluation within that five year timeframe. Does that answer
your question?
Alderwoman Lu
Yes and just to follow up. So the equalization ratio that we are given will allow us to be taxed less if our values have
gone down? Is that correct?
Richard Vincent, Chief Assessor
Well, no. The municipality still has to raise whatever the funds are that they need. So if the ratio goes down, it doesn't
mean that you're taxed less. What can happen is the individual burden on the total taxes can shift from property to
property or class of property to class of property. But it doesn't mean that your taxes will go up or down in total.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. | guess | just misunderstood that. Could | ask one last question? When you were looking at your
September - when you were going through your September report, you said that it included all valid sales. | just
wondered did you mean that it was based on what's the word — verified sales?
Richard Vincent, Chief Assessor
No. Matter of fact, I'll correct myself on that. Thank you. So we did not have all the sales validated. | did not include the
known invalid sales. So it might be a name change, a property put into a trust. | did not include those but we haven't
had the opportunity to qualify every sale, validate every sale and so it did include some sales that may not be truly valid
qualified sales.
Alderwoman Lu
Okay. And is Vision now doing the sales verification data - sales data verification?
Richard Vincent, Chief Assessor
The Assessing Department is qualifying the sales. We do the initial qualification. Vision will go out and do a field review
of the sold properties and then they do the sales analysis. As Mike had mentioned, that's one of the phases in total
process. They will do the sales analysis to determine what the 2022 assessed values will be.
Alderwoman Lu
Okay. So in the two months since you did that report, have we been able to verify those sales?
Richard Vincent, Chief Assessor
We're still working on the sales validation.
Alderwoman Lu
Okay. Thank you.
Alderman Dowd
Yes. We've been reading that the people in Manchester are really concerned about their increase in values. It looks from
your data as though the impact in Manchester would be greater than it is in Nashua per the difference in assessed value
versus sale value. So can you just address that for a couple minutes? Is Manchester worse off | guess if you want to go
that way? For values of the sales versus the assessed value on the books.
