Pull two comparable colonials in Essex County today. One sits in Maplewood, assessed near $807,000, carrying an average tax bill around $19,378 for 2025. The other sits in Montclair, assessed near $640,000, carrying an average bill around $22,537 for the same year. On paper, Montclair looks like the pricier proposition: a higher bill sitting on a lower assessed value.
That comparison is where most buyers stop, and it is the wrong place to stop.
Montclair's assessed values are not measuring the same thing as Maplewood's. The two towns sit at opposite ends of a countywide correction that has been building for years, and until you know where a town falls in that correction, its tax bill tells you very little about what you are actually paying for.
The number hiding inside every assessment
New Jersey expects towns to assess property near 100 percent of what it would sell for on the open market. In practice, assessments drift as home prices rise and towns go years, sometimes decades, without a full recalculation. The state tracks that drift with a figure called the Director's Ratio, a measure of how close a town's assessed values sit to true market value.
Maplewood's ratio currently sits at 101.60 percent. Roseland is at 97.99 percent. South Orange, which completed a revaluation in 2024, sits at 95.71 percent. These towns are, for practical purposes, assessing homes at what they are actually worth.
Montclair tells a different story. The township's certified ratio stood at 61.52 percent in late 2025 and had slipped to roughly 56.26 percent by the 2026 certification, meaning assessed values sit at little more than half of true market value, and the gap keeps widening while the town waits on its next reset. Run that $640,000 assessment through the 2025 ratio and it implies a true market value closer to $1.04 million. That is the piece missing from a side by side comparison of tax bills. Montclair's number looks close to Maplewood's, but it is sitting on a home worth roughly a quarter million dollars more. The lower assessed figure is not a discount. It is a lag.
The math a listing sheet won't show you
Essex County's own published guidance for tax appeals walks through a version of this exact math, and it is worth seeing once so the pattern sticks. Take a Montclair home assessed at $850,000. At the 2026 ratio of 56.26 percent, that implies a market value near $1.51 million. If recent comparable sales actually support a value closer to $1.2 million, the true assessment to value ratio works out to about 70.83 percent, above the upper compliance limit of 64.70 percent listed by GroveHopper. The math points to a revised assessment near $675,120, a reduction that would save roughly $6,149 a year at the 2025 tax rate of $3.516 per $100 of assessed value.
None of that is a projection for any specific house. It is a demonstration of how far off an assessment can drift before a homeowner even notices, and why relying on the number printed on a listing sheet, rather than on recent sales, is the wrong way to estimate what a home in Montclair actually costs to hold.
Why Montclair hasn't caught up yet
Montclair last completed a full revaluation in 2018, and before that in 2006. The 2006 reval landed near the top of the market. Homeowners who filed appeals in the years that followed mostly won, and the resulting refunds ran into the millions, eventually forcing the state to limit how much the town could borrow to cover them. Patch reported that a separate dispute from the 1980s had already established that Montclair's revaluation process could be challenged if it wasn't handled fairly.
That history shapes how carefully the current revaluation, ordered by the Essex County Board of Taxation in November 2025, is being managed. The town council approved a $2 million appropriation to fund the process across roughly 11,000 parcels, and officials have said the goal is to apportion the tax burden fairly, not to raise revenue. Assessment letters are expected in the second half of 2027, with new values taking effect for the 2028 tax year. Most Montclair homeowners will see the change land on their August 2028 quarterly bill.
Between now and then, anyone buying in Montclair is buying into an assessment that both sides of the closing table know is temporary.
What just happened three towns over
Verona, Glen Ridge, and Cedar Grove already went through this. All three completed revaluations for the 2026 tax year, with new assessment letters mailed in January and February. Verona's pre-reval ratio had fallen to 70.19 percent. Glen Ridge, a compact borough of roughly 3,600 parcels, sat at 64.37 percent. Cedar Grove, completing its first reval in nearly two decades, was at 74.85 percent.
Verona's experience previews what happens once a reval moves from ordered to complete. The average resident there had been paying $13,407 in taxes on a home valued at $434,575 as of 2024. When new letters went out in January 2026, some homeowners saw new estimated annual taxes running thousands of dollars above their old bills, though the final figure still depends on the municipal budget the town adopts each spring. Worth knowing if the sting concerns you: MyVeronaNJ.com reports that the federal cap on state and local tax deductions rose from $10,000 to $40,000 starting with the 2025 tax year, which changes how much of a higher bill filers can actually offset. The Essex County Board of Taxation says all three towns received a one month extension on the standard appeal deadline, pushing it to May 1, 2026, specifically because of the reval year.
Here are several Essex County towns and where they stand right now:
| Town | Reval status | Ratio | What it means for a buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maplewood | Compliant | 101.60% | Assessed value is a reliable stand-in for market value |
| Roseland | Compliant | 97.99% | Assessed value is a reliable stand-in for market value |
| South Orange | Completed 2024 | 95.71% | Recently reset, tracks market closely |
| West Orange | Completed 2025 | Reset | Recently reset, tracks market closely |
| Verona | Completed for 2026 | 70.19% pre-reval | New assessment in place, final bill still tied to 2026 budget |
| Cedar Grove | Completed for 2026 | 74.85% pre-reval | New assessment in place, first reval in nearly 20 years |
| Glen Ridge | Completed for 2026 | 64.37% pre-reval | New assessment in place, compact town, ~3,600 parcels |
| Montclair | Ordered, due 2028 | 56.26%–61.52% | Assessed value understates market value until the reset lands |
| Belleville, Bloomfield | Ordered, due 2028 | Not yet certified | Expect a reset before 2028 closes |
| Caldwell, Fairfield, Newark, West Caldwell | Ordered, due 2027 | Not yet certified | Expect a reset before 2027 closes |
| Essex Fells, Millburn, North Caldwell | Ordered, due 2029 | Not yet certified | Furthest out on the current schedule |
What this means if you're comparing towns
If you're weighing Montclair against Maplewood, or South Orange against a town still years from its reval, the assessed value on a listing sheet is not doing the same job in every place. In a compliant or recently revalued town, that number is a decent stand-in for what the home is worth. In a town waiting on an ordered reval, the number is closer to a placeholder, and the real question is what happens when it resets.
Before writing an offer in a town anywhere on this pipeline, ask your agent or the listing agent three specific things: has this town completed a revaluation recently, what is its current Director's Ratio, and when is the next reset scheduled. Those three answers say more about what you'll actually pay in three years than the assessed value on the sheet says today. None of this is tax or legal advice. It's a map of where each town sits so you know which questions to ask before you commit.
A revaluation doesn't automatically raise every bill. Montclair officials have pointed out that the municipal portion of a typical tax dollar there runs under 25 cents, and school and county budgets shape the final number as much as the assessment does. Going in with the timeline in view, rather than discovering it after closing, is the difference between an informed decision and a surprise.
A few questions worth asking before you write an offer
Does a revaluation always mean my taxes will go up? Not automatically. Assessments typically rise toward market value, but if a town's overall ratable base grows, the rate applied to that larger base can drop, which sometimes offsets part of the increase. Verona's own reporting on its 2026 reval noted that the final number depends on the budget the town adopts each spring, not the new assessment alone.
How do I check a town's current reval status before I make an offer? The Essex County Board of Taxation posts standing notices for towns in a revaluation year along with the applicable appeal deadline. It's the most direct public source, and worth checking before assuming a standard April 1 deadline applies everywhere.
If I'm buying in a town scheduled for a reval in the next year or two, what should I do differently? Ask for the seller's most recent assessment letter if one has been issued, and have your agent pull comparable sales rather than leaning on the assessed value alone. If the town is mid-cycle, the number on the listing sheet may already be dated by the time you close.
Every Essex County town arrives at its tax bill the same way on paper and gets there completely differently in practice. Knowing where a town sits on that timeline is part of reading a listing correctly, not a footnote to it. If you're comparing towns across Essex County and want a clear read on where each one stands before you write an offer, Apogee Real Estate Advisors is a good place to start. Let's talk about your next move.
