When Patrick Moughan first heard the town of Brighton was doing a property reassessment, he expected the value of his house to go up.
After all, the town had not done a reassessment since 2018, and the $295,000 valuation placed on his Elmwood Avenue home was far less than the $355,000 he paid for it in 2020. And the Brighton housing market has been roaring, with the 14618 ZIP code ranked as the hottest real estate market in the country by Realtor.com in 2022.
But when Moughan, a network administrator with the Rochester City School District, received a notice of his new tentative assessment on Saturday, sticker shock set in.
His new assessed value jumped to $822,600 – an increase of more than half a million dollars on a 2,755-square-foot colonial. The town notice estimated that his property taxes will go from $12,513 to $19,062. That increase, if it sticks, is enough to make him want to look for a new house.
“It’s going to force us to move,” Moughan said. “I’ve already told my kids that, unfortunately, it’s unrealistic. We’d have to take them out of any extracurriculars, we could no longer go out to eat. Inflation is already brutal as it is. Adding in another $600 a month just to stay in our house is just unrealistic.”
The average house in Brighton doubled in value with the residential reassessment, officials said. The town’s total residential tax base rose from about $2 billion in 2018, to just more than $4 billion in this year’s preliminary numbers.
Moughan already has lodged an assessment challenge with the town. Brighton plans to file its assessment rolls by May 1, at which point the formal review process begins.
Click here to see Brighton residential sales data.
Large increases to assessments don’t always translate to higher taxes. That is determined by the tax levy and rate, which will be determined later this year.
Municipalities in New York are capped at a 2% increase to their tax levies year over year, meaning with a large spike in assessed value, the rate typically goes down. The properties that would see a spike in property taxes are ones that generally exceed the increase of the average house.
Town Supervisor Bill Moehle said the value of the housing market in Brighton has been ticking upward for years, but the spike truly took hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. He cited remote workers settling in the region and people returning to be close to family as major drivers.
“The Rochester market in general was more affordable than many of the big city markets, and it became possible for people to live here and buy a house for less than they would if they were still living and working in say, the New York City area or the Boston area,” Moehle said.
Brighton isn’t alone. Last year, the city of Rochester completed a reassessment process which saw city properties increase 68.4% citywide. Some neighborhoods saw the average home more than doubling in value.
Moehle also cited Brighton being a “multi-cultural” community, its commercial corridors, a diverse school district with a 95% graduation rate, and access to nature as key attractors to new buyers.
While all of Brighton saw a large increase in assessments, Moehle said the west Brighton area near the University of Rochester saw the most dramatic increases, with residential property values increasing 110% in the assessment.
During the 2018 assessment, a report from the Democrat & Chronicle highlighted concerns of residents who were, at the high end, seeing 40% increases.
“It’s become a very, very attractive place to live,” Moehle said of the town’s west side. “And again, you’ve got a great variety of homes and neighborhoods over there. One of the things I’ve learned about west Brighton is you have multi-generational families that live, or come back to, west Brighton. There’s that feel to west Brighton that people really like calling it home.”
Moughan wants to stay in his home. But if challenging his assessment fails, he said, he is looking at the west side of Monroe County to buy next. He said he feels he has been priced out of Brighton.
The increased assessment came despite his having done no major renovations or additions to the house.
“This is just ridiculous,” Moughan said. “I can’t afford to spend huge amounts of my pay just on property taxes.”
