The law, and the decisions
Two bodies of law run through every assessment challenge in New York. The Real Property Tax Law says what your assessment is allowed to be. The Freedom of Information Law decides what you can get hold of to prove it.
A free preliminary analysis. You pay nothing unless a reduction is secured.
RPTL 305(2): one percentage for everyone
This is the sentence the whole practice turns on. Section 305(2) of the Real Property Tax Law requires that
“All real property in each assessing unit shall be assessed at a uniform percentage of value”
Not at its value — at the same share of value as everything else on the roll. A town may assess at 100% of market value, or at 47%, or at any figure it likes, so long as it applies that figure to everybody. When it does not, the owner assessed at the higher percentage is paying somebody else's share of the tax.
That is an unequal assessment, and it is a different claim from saying your property is not worth what the town says. Proving value takes an appraiser. Proving the ratio takes arithmetic on the public roll. Where the evidence supports it, the second is the stronger and the cheaper route.
How an unequal assessment is proved, with the statutory definition at RPTL 522(9).
“Welcome Stranger” assessing
The commonest way 305(2) gets broken is also the quietest. A house sells, the assessor raises that one assessment toward the sale price, and the neighbours who did not sell keep their old, lower figures. The new owner ends up carrying a larger share of the tax than the law allows, purely for having bought recently.
It has a name, and the courts have rejected it:
- Krugman v. Board of Assessors of Village of Atlantic Beach, 141 AD2d 175 (2d Dept 1988) — reassessing only properties that have changed hands violates the requirement of uniform assessment.
- Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. County Commission of Webster County, 488 US 336 (1989) — the Supreme Court of the United States held that assessing recently purchased property at its purchase price, while comparable property keeps its old assessment, violates the Equal Protection Clause.
FOIL: getting the evidence out of the assessor
A uniformity argument is built from the municipality's own records. The Freedom of Information Law, Public Officers Law article 6, is how you get them — the comparable assessment, comparable sales and cost valuation reports the State's RPS software generates for any parcel in seconds.
The provisions that do the work are § 89(3)(a) (the agency has to produce it), § 87(2)(g) (the inter-agency exemption that does not fit these reports) and § 89(4)(c) (when the agency pays your legal fees).
Your right to your assessment records, set out in full.
Decisions that matter
Newest first. This list grows — each month's newsletter reports what came down, and it lands here.
Franklin v. City of Syracuse — the RPS reports are records
Supreme Court, Onondaga County · Index No. 004143/2026 · Antonacci II, J.S.C. · decided 15 September 2026
I brought this one myself, so weigh it accordingly. I asked the City for four reports the State's RPS system can generate for any parcel. The City refused, in substance on the ground that a report it does not already keep is not a record, and that running it would be creating something new.
The Court granted the petition and ordered the records produced within fourteen days, holding that these computer-generated reports fall within FOIL, because the scales tip toward the requester given “the computer-assisted ability of providing the data sought and the imperatives advanced by FOIL.”
In fairness: attorney fees were denied. The Court found the City's position reasonable and the question “a relatively close question of law.” And this is a trial-level decision, so it persuades other courts rather than binding them.
Matter of Wagner v. New York City Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene — delay, “burden,” and who pays
Appellate Division, Second Department · 2026 NY Slip Op 00516, 246 AD3d 748 · decided 4 February 2026 · companion decision at 246 AD3d 751
If you take one case from this page, take this one. It is appellate authority, it is recent, and it answers the three things an assessing unit actually does when you ask for records.
The agency granted the request, set a date for production, then moved that date again and again, each extension running past the twenty business days the statute allows, giving the size of the job as its only reason. The Second Department held:
- “Too much work” is not a reason. The agency “cited the volume and burden of production as the only reason for its delay. That was not a statutorily permissible reason for delay and amounted to a constructive denial of the petitioner's request.”
- No date certain means your clock never starts. Because the agency failed to specify a date certain for production, “the petitioner's time to appeal never started running.”
- Not telling you about the appeal excuses the appeal. “Where… an agency fails to inform the person making the FOIL request that further administrative review of the determination is available, the requirement of exhaustion is excused,” and the appeal “cannot be considered time-barred.” Knowing about the right anyway does not let the agency off.
- They pay. A requester has “substantially prevailed… when the commencement of the CPLR article 78 proceeding ultimately succeeds in obtaining the records responsive to the FOIL request, whether by court order or by voluntary disclosure.” The denial of fees was reversed and the matter sent back to fix the amount.
The companion decision at 246 AD3d 751 adds that an agency claiming an exemption carries the burden of showing the records actually fall within it.
Why this is the one that matters here. Every assessing unit that stalls says the same two things: we are busy, and we will get to it. This decision says the first is not a lawful reason and the second, without a date certain, leaves your right of appeal open rather than closing it.
Matter of Wagner v. New York City Dept. of Education — “reasonably described” is not the same question as “reasonable effort”
New York State Court of Appeals · No. 73 · 2025 NY Slip Op 05783 · decided 21 October 2025
The highest court in the State, on the two objections every records request runs into.
An agency may refuse a FOIL request that does not reasonably describe the records sought. Separately, an agency must produce records it can retrieve with reasonable effort. The courts below, and the agency, had run those two together — treating a request as inadequately described because answering it would be laborious.
The Court of Appeals held that is wrong. A request is reasonably described if the agency can tell what is being asked for and knows where to look, whatever effort retrieval then takes. And where the agency says retrieval is not reasonably possible, the burden is on the agency to demonstrate that in the Article 78 proceeding — not on the requester to disprove it.
The history is worth knowing, because it shows how far the objection had to be pushed. The requester had lost below: on 5 December 2023 the First Department affirmed the denial, holding the request was not for records reasonably described (2023 NY Slip Op 06228). The Court of Appeals reversed that. On remittitur the First Department reversed, with costs, on 17 February 2026, and remanded to the Board of Education (2026 NY Slip Op 00869, 246 AD3d 552).
Why it matters when you ask an assessor for your reports. The two answers a town most often gives are that the request is too vague and that producing the reports would be too much work. This decision separates them, and puts the second squarely on the town to prove. A report the RPS system will generate on request is not beyond reasonable effort because nobody has generated it yet.
The Welcome Stranger cases
Krugman, 141 AD2d 175 (2d Dept 1988) · Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co., 488 US 336 (1989)
Set out above. Both are decades old and both describe a practice that is alive in Upstate New York today.
Keeping up with it
New decisions, new legislation and what changed this month go out in the monthly newsletter, on the first Tuesday. Everything reported there is added to this page.
This page describes New York law in general terms and is not legal advice. I am a licensed New York real estate broker and a former Small Claims Assessment Review hearing officer, not an attorney. Statutory language is quoted from the Real Property Tax Law and the Public Officers Law as published by the New York State Senate; decisions are quoted from the official reports.