Property owners challenging new assessed values calculated during Lackawanna County’s first reassessment in nearly six decades will have a chance to make their cases at formal appeal hearings starting next month.
The pending appeals process that begins Aug. 4 and runs through October is one of the last procedural steps in the long-overdue reassessment that began in 2022 and will culminate later this year when officials formally certify new assessments to take effect next year. Because the county, municipalities and school districts use assessed property values to calculate annual property tax bills, new assessments stemming from the reassessment project will impact residential and commercial property tax burdens in 2026 and thereafter.
How one’s individual tax bill may change is unclear at this stage, as county, school and municipal tax rates will fall as assessed values increase to ensure the reassessment process is essentially revenue-neutral for taxing bodies, and the taxing bodies themselves won’t set next year’s rates before new assessments are certified Nov. 14. A general rule of thumb is that tax bills for about a third of properties go up after reassessment, a third go down and a third remain more or less the same.
But the county still expects a deluge of appeals from property owners concerned their new assessments, which should reflect a property’s fair market value, are too high. The formal appeals follow an informal review process that wrapped up earlier this year and saw thousands of property owners question the tentative reassessed values they received in March. County officials mailed last month assessed valuations for all 102,685 properties countywide, valuations that largely mirrored the March figures but in some cases reflected changes made after informal reviews.
County assessment Director Patrick Tobin estimated last week that about 1,000 property owners had already filed formal appeals, with the county anticipating a flood of additional appeals later this month ahead of the filing deadline Aug. 1. For context, Beaver County’s recent reassessment of its roughly 92,000 parcels prompted approximately 5,600 appeals, Tobin said.
“I would love for that to be the total (here),” he said. “I think it’s going to get higher than that.”
New values
New assessed values were established by Tyler Technologies, the firm the county hired for the reassessment project, and the county assessor’s office. They should reflect the fair market value of a property as of June 30, 2024.
Letters the county mailed property owners last month include their property’s new assessment — a combination of the assessed values of the land and any buildings on the parcel. Barring a change prompted by an appeal, the new total assessed value listed in the letter will be applied to yet-undetermined future tax rates to generate tax bills. Property owners should not apply their new assessments to current tax rates, as the result will be inaccurate.
The letters also advise recipients of their right to appeal if they feel their new assessment is not reflective of their property’s actual fair market value. Residential and commercial appeals forms are available at the assessor’s office or online at lackawannacounty.org.
How to appeal
To appeal an assessment, fill out the appropriate form for the property in question and return it with a current photo of any buildings on the parcel and a check or money order made payable to “Lackawanna County Treasurer” to cover the appeal fee. The fee for residential appeals is $35 per parcel; the per-parcel fee for commercial appeals is $125.
Both the residential and commercial appeals forms advise property owners pursuing an appeal that they’ll need to produce photos of and assessed values for three comparable properties that were sold between Jan. 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024. For the purposes of residential appeals, comparable properties “should be of similar style, quality and or condition, living space within 500 square feet, and located in the same development, municipality or school district,” per the form.
If a residential property is improved, meaning it has a house or other building on it, and its total assessed value is $700,000 or more, a certified state appraisal must be filed two weeks prior to the owner’s hearing date. That’s also the case for land-only residential properties assessed at $150,000 or more, unimproved commercial properties assessed at $1 million or more and improved commercial properties assessed at $2 million or more.
Appeals forms can be mailed to or returned in person at the Lackawanna County Assessment Office, 123 Wyoming Ave., 2nd Floor, Suite 254, Scranton PA 18503. The assessment office will then notify property owners via letter of the date and time of their appeal hearing, Tobin said.
Reassessment appeals will not be rescheduled.
How to prepare
Several attorneys who participated in a town hall meeting on reassessment that Commissioner Chris Chermak held in May recommended those considering appeals, be they residential or commercial, to get professional appraisals done to help make their cases.
And there may still be time to get an appraisal, especially if one’s hearing date is scheduled for later in the three-month period during which appeals will be heard. Attorney Frank Hoegen, a managing partner with the Wilkes-Barre firm Hoegen & Associates PC that’s representing Lackawanna County clients pursuing appeals, said property owners don’t have to file their appraisals on the same day they file their appeal.
“Hiring an appraiser adds to the credibility of your presentation and usually the ones that are the most credible are the ones that get the best results,” said Hoegen, referencing the idiom you get what you pay for. “So hiring a qualified appraiser to help you in the presentation of your appeal … is always a good idea.”
Property owners can also bolster their case by presenting comparable property sales as evidence — comparables being “something that’s similar in age, location, condition (and) size,” he said.
Online real estate platforms — Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com, for example — can be good sources for gathering property data. The county assessor’s office also maintains an online database with information on parcels, including past sales dates, current assessed values and reassessed values set to take effect in 2026.
“In today’s modern world there’s a lot more information available,” Hoegen said. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years. We have information available online that wasn’t readily available 10 years ago.”
Chermak urged property owners last week to take a hard look at their assessed values and do their homework, noting again at Wednesday’s commissioners meeting that new assessments will impact property tax bills next year and moving forward. He reiterated that all appeals must be filed by Aug. 1.
Where to go
All reassessment appeals hearings will take place in space the county leased for that purpose in the Marketplace at Steamtown, 300 Lackawanna Ave., Scranton. The hearing space is located next to the Electric City Aquarium.
Appeals themselves will be heard by the county’s permanent appeals board and several auxiliary boards commissioners have filled in recent months. Starting Aug. 4, appeals will be heard weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a one-hour lunch, Tobin said.
The appeals boards have the right to increase, decrease or leave unchanged an appealing property owner’s assessment. Property owners unsatisfied with the results of their hearings have the right to challenge their assessments in county court.