12/14/2020 Assessment Community Weekly

Happy Hannukah!

SalesWeb update

As you know, SalesWeb is ORPTS’ online database of property sales. (In the Online Assessment Community, it’s labeled Real Property Transfer Data.)

For decades, SalesWeb was available to any member of the public who requested a user ID and password from ORPTS. Most of our 2,000-plus users work in the real estate industry.

We’ve updated the tool so that it no longer requires a user ID or password.

You can still access SalesWeb in the Online Assessment Community. However, there is also a link to the tool on the landing page for assessors and county directors, as well as the landing page for property owners. To access the new link from Property tax and assessment administration, select RP-5217/Sales Reporting in the left-hand menu.

Assessor/Director Hotline closing at 1:00 next Monday

The Assessor/Director Hotline will be unavailable on Monday, December 21, after 1:00 p.m.

Updated property class code webpage

We’re sometimes surprised what the data tells us when we look at web statistics. This is one of those cases. Property type classification codes is one of the most frequently visited webpages on our website. This means that it’s a resource for taxpayers, as well as all of you.

We updated the webpage to make it more user-friendly and to ensure that it was up-to-date with all of the latest PCCs.

Best wishes to Eric Axelsen on his retirement

Dutchess County Director Eric Axelsen will be retiring at the end of the year. Aside from his career with the NYS Division of Equalization and Assessment and ORPS, we’ve had the opportunity to work with him as a member of RPTAC, RPS Governance and various other teams. We wish you the very best in your future endeavors Eric!

New judicial case

We’ve added NYCTL 1982-2 Trust v Alzheimer's Found. of Staten Is., Inc. to Judicial cases.

And the answer is:

Last week we asked: If the 79% tax rate on taxpayers earning more than $5 million proposed in 1935 was implemented, it would have impacted one taxpayer. Who would that have been?

If you’ve been following holiday news over the past few weeks, our hint (“The owl knows.”) would likely have pointed you in the right direction. Here’s the owl that started out in Oneonta and made it to New York City in the tree that would become the 2020 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.