Southampton officials hear study showing assessment rates well below market; consultant recommends tax-shift modeling

Lisa Gory, Southampton's assessor, told the Town Board that the town's level of assessment has fallen substantially since the last townwide reassessment in 2019. "So currently it's at 59.7," Gory said, summarizing the equalization rate used for the upcoming 2026 assessment roll.

Tom Donado of Municipal Valuation Services, who conducted a neighborhood-level sales-ratio study for the assessor's office, said the micro-analysis covered 13 neighborhood groupings and produced assessment ratios clustered in the mid-60s at the valuation date used in his report. Donado told the board the bigger concern was the coefficient of dispersion (COOD) in many neighborhoods, which he said was "hovering around that 20% range," indicating wide scatter in sale-to-assessment relationships within neighborhoods.

Why it matters: Donado and Gory said that with a static set of cost tables and an outdated inventory, the town cannot reliably estimate parcel-level tax impacts without running updated models. Donado said only 916 sales were tested out of an estimated roughly 38,000 residential parcels (about 2%), a small sample that limits what sales-ratio testing alone can show. "If you want to know what the tax implication would be across the town, you need a tax-shift analysis with updated models," he said.

Board members and staff discussed how impacts would be distributed. Presenters emphasized that town-level taxes may move little for many owners while school-district and special-district tax rates drive most of the variation people experience in their bills. Donado and Gory both cautioned that new construction often appears undervalued on the roll because the town's cost tables date to the 2017'2019 period and have not been updated to reflect recent high-end construction and market changes.

Costs, schedule and process: Gory said preliminary vendor estimates returned to the town ranged from roughly $3.9 million (GAR Associates) to about $6 million (Tyler Technologies) for a comprehensive revaluation. She said the usual first step is a data-collection phase that includes sending approximately 50,000 data mailers, updating inventory and then running models for a before-and-after tax-shift analysis. Donado estimated a full townwide reassessment process for Southampton would likely span roughly three years: about a year for inventory/data collection, another for modeling and testing, and a final year for implementation.

What the board will do next: The presentation concluded with board members thanking the assessors and consultant and indicating they would have follow-up questions. No formal commitment to proceed with vendor selection or a reassessment was recorded in the transcript; the discussion closed with staff noting the expected costs, staffing needs, and the recommendation to commission a tax-shift analysis before advancing to a full townwide revaluation.

Sources: Presentation by Lisa Gory, Town Assessor, and Tom Donado, Municipal Valuation Services, to the Southampton Town Board. The board was briefed on the study methodology, sample sizes, COOD results, vendor cost estimates and an outline of the multi-year reassessment process.

Ending: Board members thanked the presenters and noted they would return to the topic after receiving additional follow-up materials and cost detail from staff.