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Deadline nears in most Massachusetts communities to apply for a property tax abatement

House_for_sale_Jefferson_Ave.jpg
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
This new house on Jefferson Avenue in Springfield's North End was sold to a low income family picked by lottery

Rising residential real estate values mean higher tax bills for many

The average property tax bill for a single-family home in Massachusetts went up by almost $400 this year.

If a homeowner believes their property has been overvalued by their local assessors office, an abatement may be the only way to reduce their tax bill.

The deadline to apply for a property tax abatement in more than 80 percent of the state’s cities and towns is this Wednesday, February 1st.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Patrick Greenhalgh, Chairman of the Board of Assessors in the city of Springfield.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.