A burgeoning wildflower meadow runs along a corner of South Street, dotting the landscape beside Michael Smith’s prominent, pale yellow home with black-eyed susans and milkweed.
Smith saves the seeds each year to sow them in the next, an addition to his thriving albeit unruly garden. As he circles his home, he points out all the things that need fixing: the weathered red storm door that’s due to be repainted, the leak in the cellar, the wood stove that needs to be brought up to code.
The house, built in 1892, is a merry-go-round of repairs. He tracks his upgrades — a new roof, foundation work and new windows among them — in an orderly file. He’s spent more than $178,000 on repairs and upkeep since he bought it in 2013.
As a result of some of those investments, the city of Concord said his house was worth $329,800 last year.
Smith was more than surprised when he opened a letter from the City of Concord informing him that his home value now clocks in at $509,000 following a citywide revaluation.
“I was like, There’s no way. Is this house really worth $500,000? Really?” Smith said. Despite his upgrades, it still bears the signs of a much older house, like linoleum kitchen floors and a dual-faucet bathroom sink.
The assessed value of his home increased 54.52% from last year and more than doubled the $223,000 he paid for the home a dozen years ago. Across Concord, median home values rose 62.55%.
Smith, a pharmacist, makes well over Concord’s median income. He’s not worried about being priced out of his home if taxes go up, he said, but he’ll feel the pinch.
He’s not the only one. After preliminary assessment notices went out in early July, Concord residents erupted with questions. The increased values were the harbinger of sky-high tax bills, far above what they had already anticipated, they feared.
However, it’s not quite that simple. Since the city’s overall value has gone up, the tax rate should go down. Home values are only one part of the equation. Still, the uncertainty and the sticker shock of some of the values are palpable.
Overall, multiple residents interviewed by the Monitor say they’re concerned about a spike in their tax bills while the price of gas, groceries and just about everything else goes up, too. They’re skeptical of big-ticket spending items that city government and schools have already taken on, like the new police station, a new clubhouse at the golf course and the new middle school.
City leaders have tried to communicate that tax bills won’t mirror the increase in assessments. The city has not yet set its tax rate, and assessors are still calculating commercial property values, which will inform the citywide property value increase.
Since the city and school district have already voted on their budgets for next year, the amount they need to raise in taxes hasn’t increased.
“I think people are under the misconception that this additional value is paying more money into the city and the schools, and it is not,” Ward 2 City Councilor Michele Horne said. “The city and schools are receiving the same amount of money; it’s just being distributed slightly differently depending on the value of your home, so many people are going to see a very similar tax bill.”
While the amount is set, who is paying more and who is paying less is changing. For example, the values of manufactured homes and condos rose more than the median average.
City leaders’ assurances have done little to quell the panic of residents who already feel the pinch of rising costs across the board.
“I can’t see Concord lowering the tax rate. I’m sorry. I just, you know, I don’t think that they’re going to do that,” said Susan Chase, who lives in a modest ranch-style home in Edgewood Heights. Her property value increased by 75% this year, to $357,200.
Inside the numbers
The median value of a single-family home in Concord rose about 62%, from $300,300 to $486,200, based on a Monitor analysis of preliminary assessment data from the citywide revaluation.
Concord’s taxable residential value in total went from $3.28 billion to $5.35 billion.
Multifamily residential buildings, like duplexes, are now worth a median of $507,700, a roughly 68.2% increase. The value of condos, meanwhile, grew by about 75% to reach a median of $291,500.
Meanhile the median value for manufactured homes more than doubled, rising from $62,100 to $127,800, marking cause for concern among residents who bought them because they tend to be more affordable.
For Chase, who lives in the Heights, the new value of her 1,200 square foot condo has her thinking about working more and spending less. She and her husband are both retired, but she works two days a week as a dental assistant to cover living expenses.
The Chases moved to Concord in 2022 to downsize from their 30-year home in Hampton and be closer to their kids, who live in Dunbarton and Northfield. They’ve made some improvements to the kitchen and bathroom, and they’ve painted the walls, but Chase doubts whether those upgrades constitute such a dramatic increase in assessed value.
After all, she doesn’t even own the land where she lives, which is the same boat for manufactured home owners.
As Chase anxiously awaits her tax bill, she has thought about picking up more shifts, she said, but she’s currently unable to because of a broken wrist. She won’t be able to return to work until the fall.
That leaves the other half of the equation: cutting spending. She’s been helping her grandson with living expenses while he’s in law school in Boston, and she anticipates she won’t be able to keep that up.
The kitchen is her “happy place,” and she enjoys cooking with quality ingredients, but her food budget might take a hit.
“It’s either going to affect food or cut down on utilities, whether it be electric, freeze a little bit more in the winter, don’t use your air conditioner in the summer, cut down on your Comcast cable bill. We’ve already eliminated the house phone,” Chase said. “You look to be frugal where you can be.”
Alexandria Moulton, who lives in Penacook, thought her assessment was fair. The value of her husband’s condo rose by $93,000 after being unchanged since the last revaluation several years ago. She does have questions, however, about how her condo’s condition was compared to her neighbors’.
Moulton has worked in assessing for years, mostly in Massachusetts but more recently in Franklin. She said estimating a home’s condition has gotten more difficult over her career. Homeowners are less comfortable inviting assessors inside nowadays, she said.
“When they can’t get in, they have to ‘guesstimate,'” Moulton said.
Assessing is a balancing act, Moulton added, and taxes might not go up as much as homeowners expect, but she doesn’t think the tax rate will decrease significantly either.
“People think that the tax rate is going to stay the same and their value is going to jump, so their taxes are going to jump. But it’s a balancing sort of math,” Moulton said. “When the values go up, the tax rate generally goes down. But with the way the city’s been spending, it’s not going to go down a whole lot because there’s just, the budget has increased so much.”
City spending
As property owners steel themselves for higher taxes, they have stirring questions about how those dollars are being spent.
Residents who spoke to the Monitor said they haven’t closely followed the finer details of city spending, but they’re very aware of large capital projects that Concord has embarked on over the past year: the $155 million middle school, the $41 million new police station and the $6 million new clubhouse at the Beaver Meadow Golf Course among them.
Smith noted that rebuilding at the Rundlett Middle School site boosts both his home value and, in turn, his taxes. His 2,000 square foot home is less than half a mile away.
Though the Beaver Meadow clubhouse costs much less, it drew the most ire from Smith.
“I know that they’re spending on rebuilding the clubhouse, which maybe it needed, but I don’t consider that to be an essential city service,” he said. “Pay the firefighters, pay the police, but a golf course?”
Moulton stressed that the daily functions of local government — police and fire departments, trash pickup and other services — are all paid for by property taxes. Concord leaders have long taken pride in the quality of those services.
Moulton agreed that a new police station was necessary and that the new location near Bouton Street will be easier for residents to use, too, with more parking.
“It will be a benefit to the city, but did it have to be that much money?” Moulton said of the hefty price tag. “I mean, that just seems outrageous.”
