As people throughout Nassau County and Long Island continue to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the difficulties to purchase or sell homes have become even more so due to the lack of in-person showings.
Because of this and other concerns, current or aspiring homeowners have encountered over the past eight months, Blank Slate Media is proud to announce a free, live, virtual panel on Thursday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. discussing the pros, cons, and how people are impacted when it comes to buying or selling a home during the coronavirus pandemic.
Featured on the panel are Anthony Piscopio, a senior executive manager of sales for the North Shore of Nassau County and real estate broker for Douglas Elliman, Deborah Tintle Hauser, chief operating officer and real estate broker for Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, Phil Raices, president and CEO of Turn Key Real Estate, and Dennis McCarthy, the senior managing director for Compass Realty.
Award-winning journalist and Blank Slate Media’s Publisher, Steven Blank will moderate the event. Those who wish to participate in the Zoom meeting will be able to submit live questions to panelists that will be answered during the event.
According to October statistics from OneKey MLS, a multiple listing service that includes Long Island real estate statistics, the median sale price for homes increased year-over-year by 9.3 percent to $590,0000 in Nassau County. Nassau home prices set a record high of $595,000 in August, according to statistics.
The number of home sales jumped in Nassau by 16 percent from the previous year, with the number of homes going into contract rose by 65 percent in the county over the last year.
Aside from the pandemic, Nassau County residents have also been at the mercy of the county’s first property reassessment in a decade, which has already drawn the ire of many residents who have filed grievances.
Of the 227,475 residential grievances filed on the 2020-21 tentative assessment roll, the commission made 60,760 reductions of Class 1 properties, according to officials. Last year, officials said, 175,067 residential reductions were made.
According to figures provided by county officials, during the eight-year frozen assessment roll period, the county reduced approximately one million residential cases while one-half of property owners were “unfairly subsidizing the other half.”
Nassau County residents Eric Berliner, Robert Fine, Michael Aryeh, and Jill Pesce individually and on behalf of all other homeowners directly affected by the reassessment filed a complaint about the 2018 tax reassessment against the county, the Department of Assessment, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, and Nassau County Assessor David Moog on April 30, 2019.
According to court filings, the plaintiffs alleged that the reassessment violated federal due process and equal protection clauses, and did not use accurate factors and market values.
As a result, the plaintiffs claimed that the reassessment yielded inaccurate results and could potentially lead to higher taxes for hundreds of thousands of county homeowners, according to Scott Mollen, an attorney representing the plaintiffs and a partner at Herrick Feinstein.
“The county made a motion to dismiss the entire case and the court has denied the county’s motion with respect to almost every one of our causes of action,” Mollen said. “The court also granted our motion to proceed as a class action.”
Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Stephen A. Buscaria denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the county and its Department of Assessment.
According to court filings, the county argued that “the plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the reassessment of residential real property in the county.”
The initial complaint claimed the county’s reassessment method “was performed in an extremely rushed manner, during an unreasonably short period of time, under a veil of secrecy, and with the utilization of undisclosed software, modeling, algorithms, undisclosed protocols and the so-called ‘neighborhood factors.’”
The plaintiffs claim that the use of neighborhood factors was another means by which the market value could be manipulated, according to the lawsuit.
Those who wish to join Thursday night’s live conversation can join via Zoom. Participants will be required to enter an email address and can ask questions in the Q&A section of the panel.
