YoY price increase on Zillow and current price

[Raj K.]

I'm interested in a specific property in Central NJ( Hillsborough Township). Im trying to understand the logic behind the pricing of some of the townhomes. These are the average trend of a particular type of Townhome. The particular townhome im looking at is being quoted at 299k. Its price history is below. It looks like its assessment in 2022 was 241k below. But this year they are asking for 299k - there havent been may significant improvements in this property. Its sibling property that does have more improvements is quoting 339k (10k price cut last month). 

Are these prices justified? Im a newbie and trying to understand this. To me - the acceptable price should be around 255k in 2022. Is that realistic ( dont want to offend them by askign 255k - assuming my lack of experience - I just have a few properties under my belt but this trend didnt make sense)

Year	Property Taxes	Tax Assessment
2021	--	$241,500 (+1.9%)
2020	$5,313 (+15.9%)	$237,100 (+7.3%)
2019	$4,584	$221,000 (+5.2%)

[Bill B.]

@Raj K.  if you out an @ sign in front of someone’s name they’ll get a notice you talked about them. 

what I’m saying people used to go to the county and complain their assessment was too high because they wanted to pay less property taxes. So about 5-10 years ago, maybe 15 years now. Most counties lowered the assessment of every property in the county and raised the tax rate. 

Let’s say you thought your house was worth $300k and the county said we want 1% property tax on $350k. ($3500 in taxes instead of $3,000) So you go to the county meeting, take up their time, show all your proof that maybe your property wa only worth $300k, and they got less money. 

So they said (to themselves, never outloud) we need an easier way to take their money. So a “smart” guy/gal stood up and said let’s reduce the assessed value on every property in the county 25% (or 50%) and then we’ll just charge 1.3% property tax. The year we make the change their property tax will go down to $3,412 (based on the new lower value of $262,500 down from $350k) so we lose a little money, but everyone is happy and nobody complains. BUT, now the “assessed value” of that home that’s worth between $300-$350k depending on who you believe is only $262,500. They can’t complain. And if we raise the value 5% next year they can’t complain about $275k, because even they know it’s worth more than that. Now we get more taxes and less problems. 

A house in my neighborhood sold for $489k in 3 days. It’s assessed value is $120k. Which number represents the “real value”

https://www.zillow.com/homedet...

Here’s the address in case the Zillow link doesn’t work. 3720 Razorbill Ct, North Las Vegas, NV 89084