Homeowners and businesses in North Wildwood got a different piece of government mail last month: They were told their properties were going to be reassessed.
Jason W. Hesley, the city’s tax assessor, sent a letter to property owners July 15, announcing a reassessment of all properties in the municipality.
The letter states that “the goal of the reassessment is to update all assessments to reflect current fair market value.” He added, “This process is not to increase revenue.”
North Wildwood is the first but likely won’t be the last county town to be redoing assessments in the near future. Every other county municipality falls below a state threshold that suggests that they need to reassess, though Woodbine is so close to the marker that it probably wouldn’t need to do so.
In the final 2025 equalization tables compiled by the county tax board and tax administrator, North Wildwood has an aggregate assessed value of $2.7 billion, compared to a true market value of $4.9 billion.
That’s a $2.2 billion gap between the market value of the city’s property and its assessed level, with property assessed at only 55.6% of its estimated worth on the real estate market.
In New Jersey, a reassessment becomes necessary when property assessments are no longer a reasonable reflection of property values, and are therefore not equitable in terms of state standards.
The aggregate assessed value’s deviation from the true value of properties should not, by state standards, be lower than 85%. When too many properties show a significant deviation in value, a revaluation or reassessment process is used to bring values back into alignment and ensure fairness in taxation.
Many parts of the state face those assessment problems, with deviations well below the 85% threshold.
What happened in Cape May County was in some ways directly related to the nation’s experience of the COVID-19 epidemic.
In 2019, the year before the first COVID case showed up in New Jersey and Cape May County, the equalization tables showed $50 billion in assessed value and $52 billion in true value across the county’s 16 municipalities.
By chance, timing was a factor in that close relationship of assessed to true value. The county had 16 reassessments or revaluations between 2010 and 2018 involving 13 of its 16 municipalities.
What also played a role, visible to any who lived through the pandemic, was the exodus of people from the densely populated areas of New York and Philadelphia who sought “safer” and more spacious second homes in Cape May County, where some of them actually waited out the pandemic. Many were helped by work-at-home arrangements with employers.
That rapidly drove up prices in a seller’s market, with the New York Federal Reserve listing year-over-year home prices in the county rising 20% per year during the height of the pandemic. Even now, June 2025 prices are running 12.7% above June 2024, according to the Federal Reserve.
These rapid changes upset the relationship between assessed and true value, but the frenzied nature of the market also meant that adjusting the assessments was like pinning Jell-O to a wall. A reassessment takes time, and the market value was changing so rapidly that values would be outdated quickly. No reassessments were attempted in the county after 2018.
North Wildwood is the first of the county’s towns to take on the task they all face. Except for Woodbine, the ratios show the need for action. County Tax Administrator Lori Rosell said in an email, “The ratios throughout Cape May indicate the need for municipal reassessments/revaluations.”
So what is the difference between a revaluation and a reassessment?
Municipalities may use either of two processes to ensure fair and uniform property assessment, as required by state law. No automatic trigger makes them mandatory. If a municipality’s tax ratio of assessed values to market values shows too great a deviation, one or the other process is needed to correct the imbalance.
A municipality can itself seek approval to undertake the process, or it can be ordered to do so by the county tax board or, in some cases, by the state.
A revaluation updates all property assessments to current market values. It is an extensive and expensive process that involves both interior and exterior inspections of all properties. It gets at more than market changes, since it includes property improvements and other factors that affect property values.
Revaluation must be done by external firms hired by the municipality and licensed by the state. That presents another problem, since only two revaluation companies are currently recognized by the state as qualified to do the comprehensive work required.
Of the 16 value updates in county municipalities between 2010 and 2018, six were revaluations and 10 were reassessments. The last full revaluation done in the county was in Stone Harbor, completed in 2018, according to state records. Since an outside firm is used, a revaluation is the more costly of the two alternatives.
A reassessment can be done by a municipality’s own personnel, using appropriate protocols and procedures. An in-house project can result in significant savings to the taxpayers. The focus is on adjusting property values to reflect current market conditions. There is data collection, but it is less intrusive and less comprehensive than a revaluation. Property values are then adjusted to reflect the results of a concurrent market analysis.
Does an adjustment of assessments based on either process mean property owners are going to pay more in taxes? The answer is maybe or maybe not.
An updating of the assessment base does not automatically drive up the tax rate. The tax level should remain what is needed to administer municipal services or run the school district. Those levies, which are based on budget costs, are the source of a rate that is applied to the new assessment base.
Assuming budget requirements remain the same and property values are adjusted upward due to rising market conditions, the tax rate generally will be reduced. At the individual level, some property owners will pay more, some will actually pay less, and others will pay about the same as before. The overall goal is to ensure all property owners are paying their fair share, based on accurate property values.
In North Wildwood, the purpose of the inspectors – who will all have appropriate identification – is to gather data. They do not set assessed value. The data they collect is analyzed by the tax assessor, who determines the assessments of all properties.
According to the city’s website, its inspectors will perform their tasks during 2025 and into 2026. After the data is analyzed and assessments determined, letters will be sent to all property owners, notifying them of the new assessment. That should happen in late 2026. The updated assessment will then go into effect for the 2027 tax year.
That leaves 14 other county municipalities with assessed-to-true-value ratios well below 85% that need some form of adjustment. Using 2025 numbers, the range of current property ratios in those 14 towns goes from a low in West Cape May at 47.81% to the high at 66.72% in Middle Township. Woodbine sits at 81.80%, only slightly below the 85% threshold.
Asked if the county tax board is ready to order any other revaluations/reassessments, Rosell, the county tax administrator, said, “Currently the board is waiting on the new ratios for each municipality. These ratios are calculated through the processing of deeds (sale price vs. assessment). This report is released by the NJ Division of Taxation on Oct. 1, 2025.”
She added, “After analysis of these ratios the board will have a more informed opinion on the next steps in the process of ordering reassessments or revaluations.”
Meanwhile, towns have the option to undertake the process themselves, as North Wildwood has done.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
