After the Grievance Deadline: What Commercial Property Owners Should Know About Settlement Season

The third Tuesday in May marks the end of the Suffolk County, Nassau County and New York City annual grievance filing season and the beginning of administrative hearings and deliberations that could yield significant settlement offers for property owners. The arrival of an attractive settlement offer usually depends on the quality of economic information provided by commercial property owners either directly to assessors (Suffolk County) or through annual filing requirements like the ASIE (Nassau County) or RPIE (New York City).

Simply put, a tax reduction won’t be offered unless a complete record of rent rolls and/or operating statements are available—and the economic data clearly supports it. Accordingly, commercial property owners looking to reduce their tax burden would be wise to take deficiency notices from their assessors seriously and try to provide requested information before the formal or informal cure period ends.

As always, the best way to negotiate these pitfalls is with the guidance of an attorney skilled in the process.