The Morris County market
Most of what I am called into Morris for has an effective date in the past.
That follows from the housing rather than from anything about the county. Morris holds a lot of large, long-held houses, and long-held houses generate estate work, date-of-death filings, retrospective valuations for a return that has already been filed, and divorce matters where counsel has fixed a date that is not today. The single most important thing to settle before engaging anybody is which date the report is being written to, because that decision is not reversible afterwards. A report built around today’s market cannot be repointed at last March; the sales in it, the conditions described and the reasoning all belong to the date it was written for.
The physical work here has its own recurring questions. Private well and septic are the norm across the western townships, and the useful answer about them is almost never a percentage — in a market where nearly every house has them, buyers are not discounting for them at all. Condition and capacity are the real variables, and an appraisal is not an inspection: I report what is there and say which tests would actually answer the question.
Acreage gets separated from improvements more deliberately than it would on a small lot, with excess or surplus land identified as such. The comparable set comes from a wider geography and contains fewer sales. That is a limitation and the report states it.
Lake communities run through Denville, Mountain Lakes, Jefferson and Hopatcong. Where a membership transfers with the property and buyers demonstrably pay for it, it counts. Where it has to be applied for separately, it is reported and left alone — a distinction worth checking rather than assuming in either direction.
Assessment appeals in Morris County
Appeals are heard by the Morris 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 Morris County
Morristown · Parsippany-Troy Hills · Denville · Randolph · Rockaway · Dover · Boonton · Montville · Lincoln Park · Kinnelon · Butler · Riverdale · Pequannock · Morris Plains · Madison · Chatham · Florham Park · Mountain Lakes · Mendham · Chester · Harding · Long Hill · Roxbury · Mount Olive · Jefferson