Grievance season in Westchester — an orientation

“Grievance season” is shorthand for the window when New York property owners can challenge a tentative assessment. The exact dates, forms, and hearing bodies differ by assessing unit. Dale Ledger can help you find the numbers worth talking about; it cannot file for you or tell you whether you will win.

What people usually mean

If the assessor’s full market / assessed value looks disconnected from recent sales of similar homes, owners may seek a reduction. The legal standard and evidence rules are set by state and local practice — talk to the assessor’s office or a qualified professional, not a website disclaimer.

How Dale Ledger helps (and where it stops)

• Helps: locate your parcel, see year-over-year assessed changes when we have multi-year rolls, scan street medians, and jump to official PROS/roll links.
• Stops: we do not prepare complaints, appear at hearings, or guarantee outcomes.

A practical checklist

1. Confirm you are looking at the tentative roll year your municipality is currently hearing.
2. Write down parcel ID, assessed value, and full market value from the official source.
3. Gather comps (recent sales) yourself or with professional help.
4. Watch the municipality’s calendar for filing deadlines — they are unforgiving.
5. Use Dale Ledger’s assessment change views only as a lead generator for questions, not as evidence.

Town starting points

• Scarsdale edition — multi-year rolls + school zones
• Larchmont edition — village roll search
• Rye edition — PROS-backed city roll (prior years not fully ingested yet)

Again: this is educational context from Infarill LLC, not representation.

Check how your parcel moved against its own street

The single most useful thing you can do before deciding whether to grieve is to stop comparing your assessment to the town and start comparing it to the homes on your own block. Dale Ledger computes that from the published rolls:

• Scarsdale — parcels that moved most against their street
• Larchmont — same comparison

Every individual property page carries the same comparison for that specific parcel. It is a starting point for a question. Renovations and new construction produce the same pattern, so a gap on its own proves nothing.

Choose a town

Unofficial. Confirm figures on each edition’s official roll or PROS before decisions.