This is a guest post by James Ricker, who originally posted a version on the Lyme List on 21 October 2026.

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Let me preface this by saying that I am not a professional assessor, nor am I a lawyer providing any legal advice.

This email will not deal with my concerns about the methodology, rather it will act as a source of information for those who will be meeting with the assessor to discuss their property cards.

I will explain the View Value and how they calculated it, to the best of my understanding. All of the information that I have gathered is from Avitar's USPAP preliminary report or from the Avitar online property cards.

The View Value is not inherently an attempt to tax a "view". The purpose of the 5-year reassessments is to accurately assess all of the properties in town at their Market Rate. This way, all property owners are taxed proportional to their accurate Market Value. View Value is one mechanism to quantify the reason that a property sells for more than assessed. Sometimes a property may sell for more than assessed due to a view; sometimes it may be because it has water frontage. Water Frontage has been a separate line on the tax cards and had a value assigned to it for at least a few years. This is the first year that View has been separated out as its own line on the property card and had a value assigned to it. In the past, it was simply a modifier to the existing land value.

In order to quantify the View Value (or Water Frontage Value), the assessor first categorizes all of the views (or waterfront) in town in multiple categories. In the case of View, there are four categories; View Subject, View Width, View Depth, View Distances. This page from the Avitar USPAP explains the definitions.

Next, they look at the Qualified sales from the past two years that included views.

They then apply their appraisal to those properties and compare it to what the property actually sold for (adjusted for the time from sale). The difference between the appraisal and the adjusted sale price is attributed to a View. Avitar then uses those View descriptions (and associated modifiers) to reverse engineer what the view base value would be for the whole town based on that particular sale. They do this for all of the Qualified sales with a view and find an average. They then use that average View Base Value and apply it to the rest of the town for their land assessments. For a particular property, they take the View Base Value (in this case $1.5M) and multiply it by the factors associated with that property, to determine the amount of View Value that should be added to the assessment.

Regarding your meeting with Avitar:

• Look over your card to ensure that all of the data is correct.
• Pay attention to the sketch and ensure that areas of the house are labeled properly (finished vs unfinished).
• Check the land conditions, is your land flat or steep? (Topo of 100 is flat, lower numbers decrease the value)
• Check the Quality rating and compare it to other building's ratings that you have been in.
• Check the Depreciation, what is the condition of your house?

Specifically, when discussing your view value with the assessor, closely look at the view definitions to determine if there are any that can be changed.

• First determine if you agree there is a view at all.
• View Depth is the vertical component of your view. This is the most difficult to understand. Think of the top of your vision being 0% and the bottom of your vision being 100%. If you are surrounded by trees and have a small mountaintop peaking out above them in the distance, your view depth is only Top 25%. If you are at the base of a mountain, with a field in front of you and the mountain rising above, that is a view depth of Top 100%.
• It is a good idea to determine if you see Mountains (Typically over 1,000 ft of prominence) or Hills.
• Look closely at the width description; there are angles depicted in the descriptions.
• If you have a wide or panoramic view, it is likely that your view is different depending on which direction you look. Ask the assessor if you able to be categorized on an average of the view factors, rather than the maximum of the view factors.
• How far away is the view?
• Finally, consider if there is a large seasonal component of your view, this will lower your view factor as well.

Hope this helps to explain,

Best,
James Ricker
67 Acorn Hill Rd