The Town of Bristol has begun a new cycle of updating property assessments, led by a team from Northeast Revaluation Group of Warwick. Northeast has done previous townwide assessments and currently hosts a database of Bristol property values.

Northeast will spend the next year doing two things. First, they will inspect all properties that sold in the recent past. Secondly, they will use that data, and those prices, to adjust assessments for all Bristol properties.

In typical times, recent sales would have included everything that changed hands in 2020 and 2021. But since 2020 was such a turbulent and unpredictable year, especially in the real estate market, the town decided to expand the analysis of recent sales. Northeast will be inspecting every property sold in 2019 and 2020, and every property that sells through the end of this year, to build its analysis.

“We decided to use 2019 to increase the data pool, because 2020 was such a wild, unusual year,” said Bristol Tax Assessor Michelle Dimeo.

The Covid-19 pandemic spurred two noteworthy trends in the real estate market: historically low inventory (meaning far fewer houses were listed for sale than would be considered typical) and a dramatic surge in prices. Expanding the research to 2019 should level out some of the “wild” impacts of 2020.

Northeast evaluators will be reviewing all sales from 2019 to the present, but only through exterior inspections. They will not be inspecting inside any properties, to reduce Covid-19 exposure or anxieties.

The revaluation process will last a year, with new property assessments released in the spring of 2022. After a period for review by the public and the town, those new values would take effect for the 2022-23 tax year.

Last week the tax assessor’s office mailed notice to those homeowners whose properties will be inspected.