UPTON — Last April, when tiny Upton narrowly approved doing a town revaluation for the first time in 30 years, much of the opposition came from lakefront property owners concerned that their valuations might jump.

But it is a property owner away from the Lake Umbagog shoreline who is unhappy enough with the results to pursue an appeal with Oxford County. He also claims the values assigned to waterfront property by assessor T.A. Associates of West Paris are unrealistically low.

Dean Merchant of Stratham, N.H., owns the former Grange Hall, located on less than a half acre of land on Route 26.

Merchant said his new valuation of $61,000 nearly doubles the 2009 value of $32,637. He said he has made some repairs and improvements in the 23 years he has owned the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. He uses the old building as a second home, he said.

A former realtor, Merchant said that following the revaluation, he brought in a local Maine realtor to give him a suggestion for an asking price, if he were to sell it. The price, he said, came in the range of the 2009 valuation.

Merchant appealed to selectmen, but said he received a letter from chairman Bob Brown declining to reconsider. If a formal abatement application is not approved, Merchant said he will appeal to the Oxford County Board of Assessment Review.

In addition to questioning T.A. Associates owner Wade Rainey on the Grange assessment, Merchant said he is also skeptical of the values Rainey assigned to waterfront acreage.

Rainey set a standard of $55,000 an acre, compared to a range of $20,000 to $24,000 on non-waterfront property.

Merchant said that $55,000 is too low. “It’s an egregious amount to me,” he said, noting that his research of town records showed one home that sold for more than $500,000 had been valued by the town at $273,000, while another that sold for $285,000 was valued at $145,000.

Back from the lake, he said a home on Route 26 is currently offered for sale at $155,750, but the town valued at $278,802.

The revaluation, said Merchant, “didn’t end up in any way, in any manner, the way any of us would have expected.” The values, he said, should be closer to fair market value.

At Upton’s April meeting, Mike Rogers of Maine Revenue Services used the term “just” to describe where values should be set.

He said then he had reviewed sales in Upton in recent years, using six waterfront properties and six residential properties. The waterfront property assessments had averaged 42 percent of their sale price, while residential averaged 64 percent, he said.

In a revaluation, he said, “the waterfront would be picking up a larger share of the tax burden, justifiably, because they sell for a greater amount, and they’re assessed lower, on an average, than your residential properties.”

Rainey: extremes discounted

Rainey acknowledges there had been lakeside property that sold for a half million.

But, he said, “we didn’t even consider those because they were way out of place.”

On the other hand, he said, some properties “were practically given away,” and those prices were also not considered.

Merchant and Rainey agree that there are not a lot of recent waterfront property sales to use for comparison in setting values of other properties, particularly since the U.S. government has over the years bought properties to add to the Umbagog Wildlife Refuge.

Rainey said he has also not factored in those sales because, he said, they tend to be unrealistically high.

He went across the state line to Lincoln Plantation, N.H. for waterfront comparisons, and found them valued low, “$30,000 an acre,” because there has been no recent overall valuation. An attempt to compare with Errol, N.H. was unsuccessful, because the town assessor couldn’t be reached, he said.

Asked how many total waterfront properties he found to use for comparison, Rainey said he could not recall.

As for Upton properties away from the lake, “we had good sales on those for a couple of years,” he said, which provided more information on which to base values.

As with the lakefront property, he said, some recent sales “were ridiculously high, two or three times what we had. You just can’t use those,” while others were very low, as in the case of a sale within a family, so those were also discounted.

Regarding Merchant’s property, Rainey said it would be Merchant’s prerogative to appeal to the county.

Since the Upton valuation was completed, said Rainey, he has received about 30 calls from property owners with questions, split about evenly between waterfront and non-waterfront owners. Some changes were made with new information provided, but in many cases, people just wanted clarification, he said.

Town Clerk Michele Bouchard said she had received a few calls, but they were not from waterfront property owners.

Rainey said he is happy with the overall revaluation process.

“I think it went well,” he said. “We were not out to drive prices high. We were out to get land values equalized.”

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