South Windsor Tax Assessor Pressuring Homeowners for Interior Inspections

Does anyone else have a problem with the Town of South Windsor Tax Assessor’s Office pressuring homeowners to allow interior inspections of homes for assessment purposes? I’ve owned a home in this town since 1993, I’ve never been asked to allow an interior inspection before. And to the best of my knowledge, the town has never even requested to come onto my property to do an Exterior inspection before.

So far, I’ve had a letter sent to me from the town alerting me to the assessor being in my neighborhood to inspect my property. Then a knock on my door by a 3rd party inspector asking to walk around my property AND to enter and inspect the interior of my home. I allowed the exterior walk around, however I politely declined access to the inside of my home. And now I’ve received another letter from the town explaining their concern that their inspector has not been able to access the inside of my home. No where does the town explain that I have the right to deny entry into my home. That is misleading and a bit disturbing. These official looking letters from the town are overtly intimidating at the least and are bound to scare many less informed people into allowing something that they are not comfortable with nor obligated to do.

After doing some significant research online, it also appears that many towns will use the lack of an interior inspection against you when they finally decide on the assessed value of your home. Not only that, many towns have rules that if you refuse an interior inspection of your home, then you forgo your right later to have a hearing to argue the towns assessed value of your home. Why is this? If I’ve not pulled any permits for improvements then the town has to assume I’ve made no major improvements. Many towns appear to use the excuse that many homeowners don’t pull the proper permits for improvements. So does that mean that when the assessor inspects your home they will simply say for example, ‘oh, you've finished your basement, we’ll need to tax you on that’?? To me, in a case like this, the town needs to first determine if the improvements have been done up to town codes, or that it’s even safe for anyone at that point to even occupy the home. How about, did a licensed contractor perform the work without proper permits? etc. These issues should unleash a whole bunch of much more serious, potentially legal issues for the town. Simply taxing you on a non permitted improvement completely misses the point of getting permits and/or qualified contractors to do your home improvements to begin with.

In my opinion, this is obviously solely about increasing tax revenue for the town, this has zero to do with the town’s concern for homeowners safety or well being. South Windsor has utilized satellite mapping for years. I say this, look at your maps, if the footprint of my house has not changed, and no work permits have been issued, then stay out of my home and off of my property.