The Fair-Share Map

A parcel-by-parcel look at which Elmira homes are assessed at a higher — or lower — share of their true market value than their neighbors. It is a map of who is over- and under-taxed relative to everyone else, not a claim that the city collects too much.

First, the Question Everyone Asks
When you see that most homes look "over-assessed," the natural reaction is: wouldn't fixing this just mean the city collects less money?
No. Fixing the assessments does not change how much the city collects.

Property taxes don't work the way most people assume. The city does not pick a tax rate and collect whatever that produces. It works in the opposite order. First, the city decides how much money it needs to run — that total is called the levy, and it's set in the annual budget. Then the rate is calculated backward from the levy: rate = levy ÷ total assessed value.

So if a reassessment makes the total assessed value bigger, the rate falls to match. The city still collects exactly the same levy. This is why reassessment is called revenue-neutral — it cannot, by itself, raise or lower the total tax take.

What a fair reassessment does change is who pays which slice of that fixed total. Homes currently assessed at a higher share of their value than their neighbors would see their bills fall; homes assessed at a lower share would see their bills rise. The pie is the same size. It just gets cut more evenly.
What the Map Shows
Every City of Elmira residential parcel, colored by how its assessment compares to its actual market value — measured against the typical home.

For each home we estimate its true market value using the Chemung County sales J-curve — the relationship between assessed values and what homes of that value actually sell for. We then compute the home's assessed-to-market ratio: the assessment divided by that estimated market value. The typical Elmira home is assessed at about 89% of its market value. We color each parcel by how far its own ratio sits above or below that typical 89%.

~4 in 10 homes assessed at a higher share of value than typical — over-taxed relative to neighbors
~1 in 4 assessed at roughly the typical share (±10%) — paying about their fair share
~1 in 3 assessed at a lower share of value — under-taxed relative to neighbors

Red parcels are over-assessed: they carry more tax per dollar of real value than the typical home. These cluster in the lowest-value, most distressed neighborhoods, where market prices have fallen but frozen assessments have not. Blue parcels are under-assessed: they've appreciated faster than their assessment, so they pay less per dollar of value. A fair reassessment would shift burden off the red and onto the blue — with no change to the total the city collects.

The Map
Click any parcel to see its assessed value, estimated market value, and how its ratio compares to the typical home. Toggle the bands in the layer control.
Tips:
  • Red = assessed at a higher share of market value than typical (over-taxed)
  • Blue = assessed at a lower share (under-taxed)
  • Turn off the "Roughly fair" band to see the over- vs under-taxed split clearly

Open full-screen map →

Why It Skews Toward the Poor

The pattern is not random. When a city stops reassessing, assessments drift away from market values at different speeds in different neighborhoods. Areas that have appreciated see their assessments fall further below market every year. Areas that have declined see their assessments stay close to — or above — actual value, because the frozen number never came down as the neighborhood did.

In Elmira that maps directly onto income and neighborhood lines: the over-assessed red parcels are concentrated in the poorest, most disinvested blocks, while the under-assessed blue parcels sit in the areas that have held or gained value. The result is a quiet transfer of tax burden from wealthier households to poorer ones — the same regressive pattern documented on the Assessment Regressivity page, shown here parcel by parcel.

The fix is reassessment, and it costs the city nothing in revenue. It simply resets every assessment to the same share of current market value, so two neighbors with equally valuable homes pay equal tax. The Reassessment page models what that would do to individual tax bills and the citywide rate.
Method & Caveats

Market value for each parcel is estimated from the Chemung County assessed-value-to-sale-price curve (6,491 arm's-length single-family sales, 2018–2025; see Assessment Regressivity). The curve is a five-point piecewise estimate, so it is coarse at the very bottom of the market — a large share of sub-$40,000 homes map to a single ratio, which is why the reddest band is broad. Ratios are compared to the citywide median (≈89%), and parcels are binned by relative deviation: over ±25%, ±10–25%, and within ±10%.

These are estimates of relative fairness, not appraisals of individual homes. A parcel that recently sold or was renovated may sit anywhere on the scale. The value of the map is in the pattern — which neighborhoods are systematically over- or under-assessed — not in any single dot.