Experience with COOP board challenging Assessment

You are going to have difficult in challenging a Board's implementation of an assessment. Board's have a tremendous amount of flexibility and are protected by the Business Judgment Rule which basically states that a Board's decision is usually shielded from judicial review if it is, in the opinion of the Board, in the best interests of the building as a whole.

Sorry for the confusion. I was mixing up my terms. I meant the city's assessed value for tax purposes and not an assessment. As I understand it, a building can accept an offer from the city for a lower assessed value or challenge and go to trial. However, I have heard that it can take up to 3 years.

The co-op board should seek the advice of an attorney specializing in tax certiorari; the atty does the challenge and negotiating; it can be a long process; usually the atty. fee is paid only if the assm. is lowered

That is what we were told. I wonder if it is worth it in the long run or if it is better to just take the scraps year to year. It really is a scam. The assessed value of the building for tax purposes(based on rental comps) keeps going up and up while the actual rents and individual apartment values are going down.

If the assessed value did go down, the rate would just go up. This has all got to be paid for somehow.

Of course. But that is why I am wondering if it is better to just take the offer of a small reduction which you can usually get year to year or fight it and try to get a substantial reduction.

Contact 2 or 3 certiorari attys and have them speak to the board. No harm done and it is in the best interest of the co-op shareholders. If the tax assessment is X for 2009 and goes uncontested, doesn't the assessment for 2010 start at X? Lowering this year's assessment impacts the following assessments.
If you access Property Shark and compare your bldg. to very similar bldgs. you might be surprised at the range of assessments (sometimes seemingly arbitrary).

on almost every meeting that my board has with the shareholders, they talk about contesting the valuation that the city gives. it seems that they do it almost every year. there are attorneys who specialize in this. i would expect that any "good for something" management company would know of at least 1 attorney who is doing this.

bob420, if memory serves, if you take it to court you're paying by the hour rather than on a contingency basis. That may well be worth it if the city's comparables are way out of whack. On the other hand, if it's not worthwhile for the lawyers to handle on contingency, probably not worth pursuing.

NWT, I doubt they are thinking of going to NY State Supreme over this. I think most of this is a confusion of a simple process. The "court' they are going to is "tax court" and it's a simple tax certiorari process like sjbh points out above. It's not even worth thinking much about. Pick a tax certiorari firm, let them play the annual game/dance and don't spend a lot of energy worrying about it. It's like deciding what company to get your heating oil from: it's worth spending a little time on, but not like deciding whether to sue the Coop next door over a park which you each think you own.

I think we're all talking about the same things. NYS Supreme Court was what the OP meant by "going to trial" and what I meant by "take it to court." I.e., going beyond the normal appeal to the Tax Commission.

So you'd be doing an Article 78 proceeding? That's the only thing I could think of, is there anything else?

No, I mean the suit where the property owner is the petitioner and the Tax Commission is the respondent. Is the following how it works?

1. Real Property Assessment Bureau assesses property.
2. Owner disagrees with assessment and applies to Tax Commission to have assessment corrected.
3. Tax Commission affirms assessment.
4. Owner petitions NYS Supreme Court to review and correct the assessment.

OP was asking about step 4.

I.e., steps 1-3 are what everybody does, and step 4 is pushing it.

I still don't see how you bring anything else than an Article 78 proceeding.

If that's what step 4 is called. What bob420 called "challenge and go to trial."

Pual Korngold at Tuckman Korngold is great. The attys usually get a percent of the savings from a reduced asseessment. Most coop boards get ripped off and agree to too high a percent.

I agree with flatiron that they do good work. One thing I will throw in: not only attorneys do tax certiorari. There are a few commercial appraisers who do as well. And of those, some used to be Tax Assessors for NYC for quite a number of years and know the people making the determinations a bit better (since they sat next to them defending them for years). And that's about as much as I can say about that.