The Town of New Hartford has several different neighborhood codes that are listed below. This information was taken from a October 23, 2003, memo from the Assessor to a New Hartford town councilman and forwarded to us. While the dollar amounts used in the neighborhood code explanations below may not reflect current selling prices, they were current at the time of the reassessments in New Hartford.   While we were in the State Reassessment Program, these neighborhood codes were supposedly used to determine what areas needed to raised.  We left the State program in July 2004 because of the outcry of residents.

The International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) defines a neighborhood as "(1) The environment of a subject property that has a direct and immediate effect on value.  (2)  A geographic area of properties sharing important location characteristics defined for purposes of market analysis or modeling (typically with fewer than several thousand properties)."  Notice both of these definitions revolve around the notion of effect of location on value.

In simpler terms, a "neighborhood" consists of properties that are comparable in terms of the probability of a buyer being equally as interested in buying House A as they would be in buying House B.  In other words, if I was a buyer, I would not be interested in looking at a house in a neighborhood code made up with homes that are 1,000 sq. ft. when I intend to buy a 5,000 sq. ft. home. Therefore, the 1,000 sq. ft. home should not be in the same neighborhood code as the 5,000 sq. ft. home.

According to the Office of Real Property Services (ORPS), neighborhood codes are used to delineate geographic areas within an assessing unit for valuation purposes. A unique code will be assigned for each delineated area. Geographical neighborhood boundaries are influenced by such factors as:

• homogeneity
• land use
• social trends
• economic trends