The Hudson County market
In most of New Jersey an appraisal is about a house. In Hudson it is about a unit and the building around it, and the building is often the harder half.
What a buyer pays for a condominium here is shaped by the monthly charge and what it covers, the association’s reserve position, any special assessment already voted, and the tax arrangement the building sits under. A unit under a payment in lieu of taxes carries a different monthly cost from one taxed conventionally, on its own schedule and with its own expiry, and buyers respond to the payment rather than to the label. None of that is visible from the listing sheet, which is why I ask for the association’s budget and recent minutes and why the assignment goes faster when you have them.
Inside the unit itself, floor and line do more than layout. How much of the view is protected from the next building matters more than how good it is today. The best evidence available in this market — better than anything I can get in a detached-housing county — is a matched pair of sales in the same building, and where those exist the analysis does not leave it.
Away from the waterfront, Bayonne, Union City, West New York and Kearny hold dense two and three-family stock that is valued as income property, on the same terms as the equivalent buildings in Essex.
A good deal of what I am asked for here is PMI removal. Values moved quickly enough over the last decade that plenty of owners have equity they can demonstrate and have not thought to. The caution attached is the same one on every page of this site: ask your servicer what they will accept before you commission anything, because a report the servicer will not look at is money spent on nothing.
Assessment appeals in Hudson County
Appeals are heard by the Hudson County Board of Taxation, and the appraisal supporting one is a retrospective assignment — valued as of October 1 of the pretax year, not as of today.
Before commissioning anything, work out whether you clear the statutory margin. New Jersey measures an assessment against true value using the taxing district's average ratio and allows a corridor either side of it before a reduction is ordered, so an owner inside that corridor can commission a perfectly accurate appraisal and still lose. The test, the two possible filing deadlines and the risk of an assessment being raised are all set out on the tax appeal page.
Municipalities served in Hudson County
Jersey City · Hoboken · Union City · West New York · North Bergen · Bayonne · Secaucus · Weehawken · Harrison · Kearny · Guttenberg · East Newark