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New York works outside New York City, and not inside it.
The law and the data both work here. Outside the city there’s no cap, filings cost about $30, and appealing is normal: 62 percent of Long Island owners have filed a grievance against 22 percent nationally. The unequal assessment ground runs on published assessed values. New York City itself is dead for houses, because Class 1 is capped at 6 percent a year and only 1,767 Class 1 applications were filed in all of 2025.
So New York gives you a ground that runs on published assessed values rather than on sale prices. You're not showing what your house would sell for. You're showing that homes genuinely like yours are assessed lower than yours is, using numbers the county already publishes.
Now that matters more than it sounds, because it means a state keeping sale prices private doesn't stop you. Illinois, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Kansas, Massachusetts and DC all have some version of it, and honestly it's usually the stronger argument even where sale prices are public.
Grievance Day, the fourth Tuesday in May in most of the state. Next is May 2027.
Miss it and you generally wait a year, so honestly the date matters more than the paperwork does.
And wherever you are, the single most useful thing you can actually do today is go find your assessment notice and read the date printed on it. That's what starts your clock, it's usually a much shorter window than people expect, and there's no getting it back once it's gone.
First, look up your own record. Outside New York City, your town or city assessor sets your assessment, and most post it online. Many towns don't assess at full market value, so look up your town's residential assessment ratio, which the state publishes. Divide your assessment by that ratio and you've basically got the market value your assessor's claiming.
Next, know where to file. The state's own advice is to talk to your assessor informally first, and it's honestly good advice. If that doesn't fix it, you file a grievance with your town's Board of Assessment Review on Grievance Day, which is the fourth Tuesday in May in most towns. The form is RP-524. If the board turns you down and you own and live in a one, two or three family home, you can take it to Small Claims Assessment Review, which costs $30 and has to be filed within 30 days of the final assessment roll. You can't use that unless you filed the grievance first.
Then bring the evidence that wins here. You can argue either that your home's assessed above its market value, using sales of similar homes, or that it's assessed at a higher percentage of value than other homes in town, using that residential assessment ratio. The second one's honestly often the easier case to make.
Also, check your exemptions. It's worth checking you're getting the STAR school tax break, and if you're 65 or older, ask your assessor whether your town offers the senior citizens exemption.
We only turn a state on once we've read its appeal rules and its actual board decisions, because that's how we make sure what we tell you is right and not generic. It takes a few days per state, and honestly it's the reason our answers are worth anything.
In the meantime our free check runs in parts of Illinois, Washington, Ohio, Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina and Oregon, and in every town in New Jersey. If you leave your email on the check page, we'll write to you the day New York goes live, and we won't email you before that.
We've screened all fifty states and DC on the same two questions. Does winning a lower market value actually lower your bill, or is there a cap sitting in between? And can you even put the evidence together from public records?
This comes from our own fifty-state screen, where we checked each state's cap, whether sale prices are public, whether there's an argument based on assessed values, and how many appeals actually get filed. Where we've quoted an appeal count, it's from the state or county that published it. If you spot an error, please write to hello@propertytaxbuddy.com and we'll correct it and say what changed.