NASHUA – After 75 years in the same home at 13 Manchester St., David Pierce fears losing the house due to skyrocketing property tax bills.

Pierce said his tax assessment value last year was $43,200. He said as a result of KRT Appraisal’s recent revaluation on behalf of the city of Nashua, that number is now $99,200.

Pierce is hoping Nashua city leaders will offer some assistance.

“I think they realized from my complaint that the elderly exemptions are being wiped out,” Pierce said. “People are paying double – that’s what the problem is. The assessments went up so high that when the elderly exemption is figured in, it wiped it out, and they are going to end up paying double.”

Through the decades, things around the Pierce property began to depreciate, including a porch that collapsed on the side of the house and railings that have rotted on a smaller porch just outside an upstairs window.

Although Pierce is not selling his house at this time, a quick search on the real estate website – www.trulia.com – lists an estimated market value of $369,216 for Pierce’s home.

Pierce said he had a guy come out from KRT – the Massachusetts firm Nashua hired to conduct the revaluation – to evaluate the condition of his home. After this visit, Pierce said they only knocked it down $10,000. He stopped in at Nashua City Hall to explain his situation and learned that officials are working on it.

“The elderly exemptions need to go up,” Pierce said.

Pierce is not the only one in this predicament. Fred Sheldon of 7 Grand Ave. in Nashua saw his assessment go up nearly $73,000 on his home, which measures less than 900 square feet.

In 2017, his assessment was at $136,700, but this year, it rose to $209,300.

Last month, he attended the Ward 4 meeting that KRT Appraisal conducted. After sitting through the discussion, he still had more questions than answers.

“Their explanation didn’t seem very satisfactory,” Sheldon said.

Although he got a new roof last year, Sheldon remains unclear as to why his assessment skyrocketed so much, and said he hasn’t done much to his home that would warrant such an increase. He said his house was built by the Nashua Manufacturing Co. nearly 100 years ago.

“What I would like to see is more transparency with KRT and have them show us the similar properties they used to appraise this property,” Sheldon said. “I mean, nobody came to the house to look at it. I don’t know how they came up with that decision, other than saying we took houses of a similar size and put them in one box and looked at their selling prices and resale values and market stuff.”

Sheldon said he lives in a neighborhood comprised of both seniors and young families. He is concerned more with the way the assessments were handled and said he and his neighbors didn’t get a second chance to ask any questions. Additionally, he would like to have the city answer some more questions.

If he could ask Donchess any question, he would ask to see what KRT used to determine why his home value increased so much.

“Almost $73,000 is a lot in a year when this neighborhood has been pretty static,” Sheldon said.

Mayor Jim Donchess said the city exemption threshold for seniors could be raised.

“We do have one of the best senior city exemptions in New Hampshire, but it’s clear that people who are getting the exception might be disproportionately affected by the revaluation,” Donchess said.

Donchess said city officials are already looking at how to address the issue and members of the Board of Aldermen have been discussing the matter. Although expanding the exemption can help, he said they are trying to keep property taxes as low as possible in an environment in which the state raises property taxes every year.

There is a list of criteria on the city website detailing how elderly tax exemptions are given, including age, income, assets, etc. This can be found online at, https://www.nashuanh.gov/162/Elderly-Exemptions.

Donchess recently said the tax rate will drop from from $25.79 to about $21.50, meaning every property owner will pay below $21.50 per $1,000 of property value.

When The Telegraph reached Nashua Chief Assessor Jon Duhamel, he declined to answer any questions, directing all inquiries to Donchess.

Adam Urquhart can be reached at 594-1206 or aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com.

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Editor’s Note: This is the second part in a continuing series examining property tax rates in Nashua. See Sunday’s edition for Part Three, which examines how revaluations will not impact the city’s need to raise taxes.

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FAST FACTS

• Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess said last week the tax rate of $25.79 will drop somewhere below $21.50.

• The city of Nashua paid KRT Appraisal $500,000 to perform valuations on every property in the city earlier this year.

• Robert Tozier, vice president of KRT Appraisal, said approximately three percent of 28,000 residential and commercial property owners asked to have their property values reviewed.

• Home or business owners dissatisfied with their assessment can appeal the revaluation at the Nashua Board of Assessors office. After that, if the matter is unresolved, they can go to the New Hampshire Board of Land and Tax Appeals or superior court. The Board of Assessors office is located at 229 Main St., and can be reached by telephone at 603-589-3040.