Good morning,

The list that was provided from Manchester is a good reference, but should not be taken as a directive from OPM.  The Office of Policy and Management has general “buckets” in which we require Assessors to classify properties for their annual abstract.  I have attached two pages from the Assessor’s Handbook that discusses the abstract codes, but, other than this guidance, there is no further clarification or mandate.    

When reviewing the attached document, it should be presumed that any land use code that begins with the number “1”, is a residential property, a number “2” is a commercial property, etc.  But, after the first number of the land use code, there is no set guidance from OPM on what the land use should be.  For instance, we do not mandate that all single family dwellings with in-law apartments be coded as a Land Use Code 109. 

We understand that this is not only problematic from an assessment perspective, but also from a data collection and analysis perspective.   Now that we have a way to collect data from every town using the Standardized CAMA Extract, having standardized land use coding is on the horizon, but those discussions are just beginning and no formal policy has been developed or implemented yet. 

Once a standardized land use code system is developed, it will likely then be a multi-year rollout process.  It is my thought that once a plan is in place, it will likely have towns change over to new land use coding at their next revaluation, which must occur every five years.  Changing land use codes in between revaluations would not be prudent.

Please feel free to share the attached document with anyone that might benefit from it, and always, if you have any municipal assessment questions or concerns, I am happy to help as best I can.

Have a great weekend everyone!

~~Jennifer

Jennifer L. Gauthier, CCMA II

Municipal Assessment Professional

Intergovernmental Policy and Planning Division

Office of Policy and Management

(860) 418-6342

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