Dr. Anne Mulhern
Several months ago I found out that the City of Lowell has been charging me for all sorts of amenities that the house I live in has never possessed. I’ve lived in this house for years, so that means I’ve paid the City of Lowell thousands of dollars in inflated property taxes. I will never get any of this money back.
If you haven’t checked your property assessment recently my advice is to do so immediately. You can go to City of Lowell Online Assessment Database and see for yourself whether or not the assessors have dreamed up whole bathrooms or other amenities that you might wish to possess in your house but never did.
If you find that the assessment of your property inflates your property value considerably, and you would rather not pay the same inflated amount next year as you did this year, call the Assessors office immediately at 978-674-4200 so that an assessor can come to your house and revise the amount. Once the assessments are finally certified at the end of the year, you’ve missed your chance to get the amount reduced for all of 2027.
What is this exorbitant property tax that you are paying?
Well, according to what I have heard, every year the City Council decides how much money it is going to require from property tax. That is part of the city budget and your elected City Councilors are deciding on that.
You, along with everybody else who is liable for these taxes, are assessed an amount based on the proportion of the assessed value of your property to the assessed value of all the properties in Lowell. You pay less if your property is assessed at a lower value because then the city bills you for a smaller amount of that pie it is ordering.
Of course, even if the assessed value of your property is reduced, you may end up paying more next year if the City Council decides to increase the total value of the property tax that it requires from all those liable for that kind of tax in Lowell, ie, if it orders a bigger pie.
7 responses to “Homeowners, Are You Paying Inflated Property Taxes?”
Ironic, because I texted about abatements on WCAP radio this morning.
Respectfully, the claim that you’ve missed your chance to reduce your taxes once end of year assessments are certified is misleading. Because in reality, you cannot even file a formal abatement until those values are certified and the actual third-quarter tax bill is generated and mailed in late December.
To protect your rights, the correct action plan is to check for errors on the Lowell Vision Appraisal database, pay your tax bill on time in January, and formally submit State Tax Form 128 to the Lowell Board of Assessors by hand or via Certified Mail before the strict February 1st deadline.
An abatement is the correct and only legal solution for this scenario because it forces the city to correct physical errors like “non-existent bathrooms” that are wrongly inflating your property’s valuation. When you file, include physical evidence (like interior photos) and be prepared to allow a city inspector inside your home to verify the error.
Also, ANY taxpayer can file an abatement regardless of age or income, you just have to prove the property itself is overvalued.
In addition, taxpayers facing a personal financial crisis can apply for separate Statutory Exemptions “(for seniors, disabled veterans, or blind individuals)” or a Hardship Deferral/Exemption under M.G.L. c. 59, Section 5, Clause 18, for a taxpayer of any age that can temporarily freeze and defer their property taxes if they face severe financial distress caused by “sudden unemployment, temporary illness, or other major life changes”.
Hardworking Taxpayers of Lowell, HELP is ALWAYS there and available.
I think there is some additional complexity here. There are two years at play, the actual year and the billing year, which are not the same. As property tax payers will have noticed, they are already paying their 2027 estimated property tax in 2026; the first bill was due in August.
I, Having discovered that the City Assessor’s office was overvaluing my property, got a City Assessor to visit before the certification and so my new information was already in their database and should affect their recently certified decision, without my having to file any paperwork. Believe me, I will be checking!
But what I did not get the city to do was to refund the amount they had overcharged me during the previous ten years and no abatement paper work can ever change that at all.
It seems based on information just received from Jeanne Balkas above that, if you file abatement paperwork before February 1, you can get your 2027 property tax bill adjusted, so that your total yearly payment is reduced to an amount that is derived from a more correct assessment of the property’s value. Your quarterly bill will be reduced also by any refund amount from the August bill that you already paid, which was an estimated bill.
So, my peculiar situation was that I got my change in after February 1, 2026, i.e, far too late for my 2026 property tax bills, but before the 2027 certification. Therefore, there was nothing I could do about my 2026, 2025, 2024, etc. property tax bills that I had already been overcharged for and paid, but I could do something about my 2027 bill that I had been overcharged for, and paid, without filing an abatement form, but just getting the assessor to come to my house and acknowledge and fix the many errors on the assessment. Maybe it was because I sounded so outraged and summer is the quiet season that I got such a quick response.
It seems like now, in order to get your property assessment changed, you have to file paperwork with the city Assessor’s office.
To clarify for everyone what occurred in your situation, Dr. Ann Mulhern, it was an informal database adjustment. Because you caught it during the summer lull before the final tax rolls were locked, the assessors corrected the Vision database as a matter of an administrative cleanup.
However, it is a myth that certification closes the door on tax abatements. Under M.G.L. c. 59, section 59, the official legal abatement period opens once the actual third-quarter tax bills are issued on January 1st.
Your proactive, informal request during the quiet season was great since you caught it early and the city was cooperative. But the statutory, legally binding process is due by February 1st. This is the mandatory legal fallback if you miss the summer or if the city refuses to fix your bill informally.
BOTH are paths to the same goal, but the formal winter abatement is the ONLY one guaranteed by Massachusetts State Law. No Lowell resident should give up on reducing their Fiscal Year 2027 taxes just because the summer has passed.
BTW, Thank YOU for sharing your experience!
ALSO: MY intentions ALWAYS, are to help, not to hurt! Because housing stability is vital and property tax over-assessments can place an unfair burden that can be the breaking point for very vulnerable working-class families and senior households.
We absolutely do not need to add to our unhoused/homeless population! By sharing these legal tools for tax abatements, we help our neighbors protect their finances, defend their rights, and stay secure in their own homes. WE are ALL in this TOGETHER!
I appreciate the additional information about the process, which all makes sense to me.
However, I only found out that an assessor had invented luxuries in my house that did not exist when a neighbor told me that the same had happened to him. Why should two people on the same block but with very different domiciles and circumstances be in the same situation – taxed for imaginary luxuries in their houses – unless this kind of thing is common, at least in Pawtucketville?
I suspect that there are at least one thousand trusting homeowners in Lowell who do not know that it is not illegal for city assessors to simply invent properties of their house and tax them on it and that many have been cheated by the city for years via this mechanism, as I was.
There is a clear motive behind such inventions. Sometimes homeowners actually do take steps to improve their living conditions, and the city would like to tax them on those improvements. If the assessor is making very expensive false assertions about their house, then the homeowner has to make a calculation: will the savings they get in reduced taxes from the city admitting it has it wrong be balanced against the extra amount that the homeowner will now have to pay for the improvements they actually made?
So new homeowners like myself, who do not know how to play the game, are made to suffer because of these fairly perverse incentives.
Just an FYI: The City of Lowell and its Board of Assessors are legally obligated under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 59 to assess all real estate fairly, accurately, and at its full cash value.
Assessors do not intentionally invent features or luxuries. However, because the city maintains data on “tens of thousands of domiciles, data entry errors, outdated historical records, or structural assumptions” this can sometimes result in inaccuracies on a property record or appraisal card.
Thats exactly why the state provides a formal, legal remedy called the “Abatement Process”. This process is specifically designed to protect homeowners, ensure government transparency, and correct data mistakes.
Hope this alleviates your or anyone else’s concerns.
Well, that fun filled week in Acapulco that I would have taken in 2019 if it weren’t for all the property tax that I paid for things that didn’t exist is gone for good.