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Department of Taxation and Finance

List of Arms length Sales - Quarterly Report 1

The List of Arm's Length Sales report should be thoroughly reviewed for accuracy, with particular attention to the Sale Update or Roll Match status; COD or RAR usability; and Sale Price, especially as it relates to the arm's length nature of the sale.

Instructions:
For more information about specific items on the form, move your mouse over each area highlighted in red. Or, scroll to the bottom of the page to read information about each item.

Item Description
one The County, Town and SWIS Code uniquely identify the location in New York State for the data on the report.
two The List of Arm's Length Sales report is typically sorted first by SWIS code, then roll id, and lastly property use. Another useful sort is SWIS, property use, and AV/SP ratio.
three The List of Arm's Length Sales report will display the sale date range selected. The sample report reflects sales from July through September 2001.
four Page 3 of 6 indicates that the currently displayed page is page number 3 of a total of six pages. The last page, page 6 of 6 provides summary information for the entire report.
five

The Book/Page is the information (Liber/Page) from the deed. This data is a unique identifier used to match the local corrections (RPS and paper) to the ORPTS database. If this information is not correct two problems arise:

  1. When book/page is different between the two files, a match may not be found creating problems in updating the sale.
  2. If an assessor correction contains an incorrect county, book and page, which matches an existing county, book and page on the sales database, then a sale would be incorrectly updated
six

Part of Parcel indicates that a split has occurred. Otherwise the number of parcels in the transfer is displayed.

Problem: When omitted and incorrectly identified on the RPS file as 'Number of Parcels = 1', the RPS035 information overlays the ORPTS sales database and changes our correct 'Part of Parcel' to an incorrect 'Number of Parcels = 1'. This incorrect change means a partial sale that had been originally excluded for COD/RAR purposes is then improperly included for those uses.
seven

Sale Data and Date Deed Recorded
Date of Sale = date of transfer (item 12 on RP-5217) and is labeled 'Sale Date' on the RPS sales update
screen.

Date Deed Recorded = date the deed was recorded with the County Clerk (item C2 of RP-5217) and is labeled 'Deed Date' on the RPS sale update screen.
eight 'Paper Corrected' indicates that a paper correction has been applied to the sale.
nine 'Not Roll Matched' indicates that ORPTS was unable to match to the 15-C Assessment Roll and update the sales database with assessment information, therefore, assessment data for these sales may need
correcting, especially if "Not Updated" is also displayed. NOTE: The 15-C matching and update has been done against the respective Town roll. Assessing unit villages should continue to provide corrections to village assessment data when necessary.
ten A sale which is overlapping municipal boundaries can be indicated via the check box on the correction form (for paper corrections) or via Condition Code 'M' on the RPS file.
eleven 'Condo' indicates that a sale will be excluded for COD and RAR purposes.
twelve 'Significant Change' means that the physical change occurred between the taxable status date for the preceding final assessment roll and the date of sale. (This does NOT mean that the improvement was discovered within this time frame.) The value of the physical change is 10% or more of the total market value of the property (not assessed value). (The assessment should change on the next appropriate roll.) The physical change to the property is due to either construction or demolition and must be reflected on the assessor's annual report. (Equalization changes do NOT support this correction.)
thirteen Property Use
This field is the property use at the time of the sale.
i.e, 200 Residential - Property used for human habitation or
210 One Family Year-Round Residence - A one family dwelling constructed for year-round occupancy.
fourteen A sale identified as 'New Construction' is NOT automatically excluded for ratio purposes (i.e., RAR, COD, Sales Ratios). In order to be eliminated, the sale must meet the requirements of, and be identified as 'Significant Change'.
fifteen Assessed Value:
May need to be corrected for sales that are 'Not Roll Matched' and 'Not RPS Updated', or where a court ordered AV change was required and the assessment is different from the update from the 15-C file. Incorrect assessments will need to be corrected via a paper correction, if they have been previously transmitted via RPS035.

Sale Price:
In some cases, '100% Financing - No Money Down transactions' have a Full Sale Price entered on the RP-5217 that includes not only the total amount paid for the property, but also the value of the concessions. When this type of sale is discovered, deduct the value of concessions and report the corrected Full Sale Price to ORPTS which will then be used in any RAR, COD and Equalization Rate calculations.
sisteen AV/SP Ratio
The ratio of Assessed Value (AV) to Sale Price (SP). The assessed value and sale price values used are
displayed in the column directly to the left of the AV/SP Ratio. A ratio close to 100 means that the two numbers are close to each other.
seventeen 'Not Updated' indicates a sale has not been updated via an RPS transmittal or with a paper correction. For RPS reporters, this indicates that we have not received this sale in a transmittal or we were unable to update our database with the local RPS information. NOTE: If a sale appears on this report as 'Not Updated' but carries a 'T' on the RPS file, check date of local transmittal compared to date on the online sales report. If timing of ORPTS update is an issue, changes can be verified via SalesWeb. If timing was not an issue, change 'T' to 'R' if running RPS and retransmit to the Sales Unit or ask Sales staff for investigation.
eighteen COD/RAR indicates that the sale is considered COD and/or RAR usable. If blank for one or both of these uses, then the sale will NOT by used.

Coefficient of Dispersion (COD)
The most common measure of relative dispersion is the COD. This measure indicates the quality of assessments relative to some stated norm, in this case, the level of assessment.

Residential Assessment Ratio (RAR)
RARs are made available annually for use by taxpayers and assessors as a general guideline to measure assessment equity. The RAR uses arms-length transfers of one, two or three family residential properties (other then condominiums) that have sold between the latest final roll and the previous final roll.
nineteen 'RPS Updated' indicates that an RPS transaction has been applied to the sale. If both a paper correction and an RPS transaction have have been applied, only 'RPS Update' is displayed.
Updated: