The Internation Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) defines a neighborhood as "(1) The environment of a subject property that has a direct and immediate effect on value. (2) A geographic area of properties sharing important location characteristics defined for purposes of market analysis or modeling (typically with fewer than several thousand properties)." Notice both of these definitions revolve around the notion of effect of location on value.
The Tompkins County Department of Assessment has broken down Tompkins County into seperate neighborhoods or market areas. These neighborhoods were created by analyzing sales of real property. These sales were then delineated according to differing market factors (such as school district and view) within each municipality.
The neighborhood code is a 5
digit
number. The first 2 digits refer to the municipality's State Wide
Identification System (SWIS). For example the SWIS code for the
Town of Caroline is 502000 or for explanation purposes 50-20-00 (50 for
Tompkins County,
20 for Town of Caroline, 00 for no village present). The
neighborhood codes for Caroline will thus start with 20. The 3rd
digit of neighborhood codes is always a zero. The 4th and 5th
digits explain the "value" of the neigborhood. The lowest valued
neighborhood would be 10 and as the value of the neighborhood
increased, so would that value to 20. For example, there are 3
neighborhoods in the Town of Caroline: 20010,
20020 and 20030. Neighborhood 20010 is the lowest valued
neighborhood. Neighborhood 20020 is valued higher than 20010 but
less than 20030.
Now there are some exceptions
to this. If
the neighborhood consists of lakefront properties the last 2 digits
will always be a 40 regardless of how valuable the lakefront is
compared to other neighborhoods. Also, the neighborhoods in the
city of Ithaca do not follow this numbering scheme.
Neighborhood Maps