In Chemung County, a homeowner whose property sold for $40,000 pays 72% more in property taxes per dollar of actual value than a homeowner whose property sold for $300,000. This is not an accident. It is the direct result of a frozen assessment roll.
A ratio above 1.0 means the assessed value exceeds what the property actually sold for — the owner is paying taxes on phantom value. A ratio below 1.0 means the property is under-assessed — the owner pays less than their share. In a fair system, both would cluster near 1.0 regardless of price. In Chemung County, cheap homes cluster above 1.0 and expensive homes cluster below it.
This analysis uses 6,491 arm's-length single-family sales recorded in Chemung County between 2018 and 2025. Arm's-length sales are transactions between unrelated parties at fair market value — foreclosures, family transfers, and quitclaims are excluded. The data comes from the New York State ORPTS SalesWeb system.
The county-wide J-curve shows the cheapest homes — those selling under $50,000 — carrying a median ratio of 1.36. These are the houses in the most distressed neighborhoods, the ones most likely to be owned by people with the least political power and the least ability to appeal their assessments. They are, on average, paying property taxes on value that does not exist.
The City of Elmira's curve is steeper. An Elmira home that sold for $125,000 to $150,000 carried a median assessment ratio of 0.43 — assessed at less than half its actual market value. The frozen assessment roll has allowed decades of market appreciation to go uncaptured in Elmira's tax base while leaving the cheapest properties stuck near their assessed values, which haven't fallen as fast as the neighborhood conditions that drove prices down.
In 2018, a home selling in the $75,000–$150,000 range carried a median ratio of about 0.83 — assessed at 83% of market value. By 2025, that same price range had a median ratio of 0.55. The gap between cheap homes (ratio holding near 1.0) and mid-range homes (ratio falling year over year) has nearly doubled in seven years.
This is what happens when a housing market moves and assessments don't. Post-pandemic home price appreciation hit Chemung County the same way it hit the rest of the country — median sale prices for arm's-length single-family transactions climbed significantly between 2020 and 2024. The assessment roll didn't follow. The result is an ever-larger subsidy for properties that have appreciated, paid for by properties that haven't.
The only corrective is reassessment. The equalization rate adjustment the state applies — which produced the apparent jump in Elmira's "full value" figures in 2023 — adjusts how the state measures the roll for aid and apportionment purposes. It does not change a single property's assessed value. No one's tax bill changes because of the equalization rate. Only a actual citywide reassessment resets individual assessments to current market value.
Among the 1,699 arm's-length single-family sales recorded in the City of Elmira between 2018 and 2025, 17.7% involved a property assessed at more than its sale price. These are predominantly in the lowest price tiers — homes under $50,000 — in the city's most economically stressed neighborhoods. The households in those homes are disproportionately renters (whose landlords pass property taxes through in rent) or low-income owners who have limited options to appeal or move.
Meanwhile, properties at the middle and upper end of the Elmira market are dramatically under-assessed. A home selling for $130,000 in Elmira in 2024 typically carried an assessed value under $60,000. The owner pays taxes on $60,000 worth of property while living in a $130,000 house. The effective tax rate per dollar of actual value is less than half what a neighbor in a $40,000 assessed property pays.
This is not a story about the rich avoiding taxes. Most of these properties are modest working-class homes. The regressivity isn't driven by mansions being under-assessed — it's driven by an entire housing market appreciating away from a frozen assessment roll, unevenly, in ways that happen to follow income and neighborhood lines.
Reassessment. That is the only mechanism that corrects assessment regressivity. When a city reassesses to current market value, every property's assessed value is reset to reflect what it would actually sell for today. The ratio distribution tightens around 1.0. The effective tax rate per dollar of value equalizes.
Reassessment is often described as a tax increase on long-time homeowners — and for some it is, if their neighborhood has appreciated. But the framing obscures what's actually happening: under the current system, those same long-time homeowners have been receiving a subsidy, paid by their neighbors in cheaper properties who have been over-assessed. Reassessment doesn't raise taxes — it reallocates them to reflect actual values.
The Elmira page models what citywide reassessment would mean for the distribution of assessments and who would see their bills change. The Why It Matters page explains why reassessment hasn't happened despite the evidence, and who benefits from the status quo.
Method: 6,491 arm's-length single-family (class 210) sales in Chemung County, 2018–2025, from NYS ORPTS SalesWeb (data as of May 2025). Each sale's assessment-to-sale-price ratio = assessed value ÷ sale price. Sales below $10,000 and ratios above 5.0 are excluded as likely data errors or non-market transfers. The headline gap compares the median ratio for sales under $50K (1.361) with sales of $200K or more (0.790): 1.361 ÷ 0.790 ≈ 1.72×, i.e. 72% more tax per dollar of value. The regressive pattern this measures is well documented in the assessment literature (e.g. Berry 2021 on Chicago; Avenancio-León & Howard 2022).