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Carteret Borough assesses homes at or near full market value, so an appeal comes down to whether your assessment is more than your home would really sell for. Here's how to tell, and the 2027 deadline.
Carteret Borough's official 2026 ratio is 106.50 percent, which means homes there are assessed at or near what they'd really sell for, usually because the town recently revalued. That's down from 112.87 percent last year, which usually means home prices in town rose faster than assessments did. So the ratio arithmetic most of New Jersey uses doesn't really come into it here. The question's simply whether your assessment's more than your home would've sold for on October 1 of last year.
And the evidence that answers that is sales of genuinely similar homes nearby, close to that date. If they sold for less than your assessment, you've probably got a case. If they sold for about the same or more, an appeal's honestly not going to get anywhere.
Appeals in Middlesex County are due April 1, 2027. It's May 1 instead in a town that's put a revaluation or reassessment into effect that year.
Now the petition has to be received by the county board by that date, so a postmark doesn't count. Copies also have to go to the town's assessor and its clerk, and missing one's enough to get an appeal dismissed. Also, your property taxes need to be paid up through the first quarter, or the board can dismiss it without a hearing.
Fortunately filing's cheap. It costs between $5 and $150, depending on your assessment: $5 under $150,000, $25 up to $500,000, $100 up to $1,000,000, and $150 above that.
Well, honestly, most people shouldn't. But in New Jersey a lot more people could win than actually try. When we ran the Chapter 123 test against recent sales in 302 towns, about 1 in 5 homes came out above the line, mostly because ordinary sale prices vary more than the legal range allows. Yet only about 1 in 267 homeowners filed a residential appeal in 2025.
So it's worth five minutes to check. Our free check looks up your home in the state's own records, applies Carteret Borough's official ratio, shows you your line, and it'll show you what homes assessed like yours have actually sold for. If you're inside the range, it'll tell you pretty plainly not to bother.
And there's more on how the arithmetic plays out across the state in our New Jersey odds article.
Carteret Borough's ratio comes from the New Jersey Division of Taxation's Table of Equalized Valuations for 2026, promulgated October 1, 2026, and that's the table county boards apply to 2027 appeals. Towns can challenge it in the Tax Court within 45 days, so a few ratios could still get revised, though most won't. The range rule is N.J.S.A. 54:51A-6, and the filing fees are N.J.S.A. 54:3-21.3. The deadlines, the copies, the payment rule and the Monmouth exceptions come from the Division's guide to tax appeal hearings and the Monmouth County Board of Taxation's handbook.
And the 1 in 5 figure's our own measurement of 73,771 sales in 302 towns in 2025 and 2026. The 9,524 residential appeals filed in 2025 is the Division's figure as it's been reported in the press, and we haven't read it in the original.
If you spot an error, please write to hello@propertytaxbuddy.com and we'll correct it and say what changed.