Sometime in late 2027, a letter lands in every Montclair mailbox with a new number on it — and that number sets your property taxes for years. Here’s what it means, and what I’d do before an inspector ever knocks.
A revaluation is not a tax increase — it re-slices the same pie. Whether your slice grows or shrinks depends on one thing: how far your corner of Montclair outran the rest of town since 2018.
Right now, the average Montclair home is assessed at about sixty-two cents on the dollar of what it would actually sell for. In November 2025, the Essex County tax board ordered Montclair to revalue all of its roughly eleven thousand properties by 2028 — the first revaluation since 2018. The state tracks a number called the Director’s Ratio — how close assessments sit to true market value — and Montclair’s is 61.52%. Assessments were set in 2018; the market didn’t stay there. This July, the typical Montclair sale closed about 15% over its original asking price, and some went 50–60% over. That drift isn’t even across town — some homes have nearly doubled since 2018, some barely moved — and the reval exists to fix exactly that.
Montclair collects the same total tax levy the day after the reval as the day before. What changes is how that total gets divided across the town’s properties — think of it as re-slicing the same pie. Every property gets re-measured against today’s market instead of 2018’s, and your slice either grows, shrinks, or holds, relative to your neighbors.
Last time, in 2018, some assessments went up and some came down — on average, residential assessments rose about 22.5%, and the tax rate was cut by roughly the same share to keep the total flat. The town doesn’t win or lose. Individual owners do.
What’s firm: the county order says complete for the 2028 tax year, and new assessment letters are expected in the second half of 2027. Everything else follows the standard shape of a reval this size — inspections before the letters, an informal review window right after, then a certified tax list and first bills reflecting it during 2028.
The date that actually matters is the appeal deadline. For a revaluation year, New Jersey law (N.J.S.A. 54:3-21) gives you until the later of May 1st or 45 days after the town finishes mailing assessment notices. Plan on spring 2028 — but the date that counts is the one printed on your own notice.
Nobody can promise your outcome, but the pattern holds across most revaluations. Homes gut-renovated or expanded since 2018 tend to go up — the assessment finally catches the work. Fast-appreciating blocks tend to go up. Older homes untouched in decades tend to hold or come down, because the reval re-levels them against everything that improved around them. Condos are the wild card.
Honest answer: it depends which side of the reval your home likely sits on. If yours is the renovated, fast-appreciating kind that’s likely to jump, selling before the new bills land means buyers are still underwriting the old tax number. If yours is likely to hold or come down, there’s no rush — a lower post-reval bill becomes a selling point later.
I’ll build an appraisal-grade read of what your home would sell for today, from real closed comps on your block — the number that actually matters at an informal review.