Philadelphia Punts This Year’s Property Reassments

For the second time in three years, Philadelphia property owners appear to be catching a break from the city.

Philadelphia will not conduct property reassessments this year, carrying over values from the previous year, Axios reported. That means next year’s property taxes will remain the same as they were last month.

Chief assessment officer James Aros Jr. cited the large number of property appeals for last year’s assessments as a key reason for pushing off reevaluations of the city’s properties. There were nearly 20,000 “First Level Review” appeals filed with the city over last year’s assessments; another 11,000 to 12,000 appeals were filed with the Board of Revision of Taxes.

For property owners, the pause in reassessments likely saves them money on taxes, considering rising real estate prices. For the city, however, it cuts off a revenue source, which could hamstring Mayor Cherelle Parker’s $6.7 billion budget blueprint, which included $800 million for housing programs.

Last year, Parker announced that the average homeowner across the city who signed up for the homestead exemption would see a $330 uptick in their property taxes due to a property value reassessment.

“No one ever wants to see their property taxes go up,” Parker said at the time, according to NBC Philadelphia. “But, unfortunately, that’s not what the law requires.”

In 2023, the city also paused property tax assessments. The year before that, tax assessments came back after a three-year break brought on by the pandemic.

The pattern of stopping and starting property tax assessments is a double-edged sword for property owners. On the one hand, owners likely won’t see an uptick in their annual bills. On the other hand, the bill increase could prove more staggering when the assessments resume; after the three-year pause, a quarter of Philadelphia homeowners saw their property values double.

— Holden Walter-Warner