East Hampton's Revaluation, As It Lands

The town next door is living Colchester's 2026 revaluation one year early — measured from the state's new grand list data

This one has finished playing out. East Hampton’s new assessments took effect October 1, 2025 and reached the July 2026 tax bills at an interim rate of 27.79 mills. The FY 2027 budget was rejected at referendum three times (June 2, July 14, August 5) and passed at a fourth on August 26, 2026. This page uses the rate set on it, 28.22 mills — 0.40 above the Town Council’s August 5 proposal of 27.82, which is worth roughly 1.4% on every bill. One thing to know about that figure: as of September 3, 2026 the town’s Annual Budget 2026-2027 page had not posted the August 26 result and still listed 27.82 as the August 5 proposal, and the Collector of Revenue page listed the 27.79 interim rate, saying the permanent rate would be set by the Board of Finance once the budget was approved. If the permanent rate the Board sets differs from 28.22, every estimated figure on this page moves by about 3.5% per mill; the calculator below takes any rate.

Why this page matters for Colchester

East Hampton — one town over — last revalued in 2020, right at the start of the housing run-up, so its October 1, 2025 revaluation swallowed the entire boom in one bite: home assessments rose about 51% town-wide. Colchester faces the same reset on October 1, 2026. East Hampton is the closest measured preview of how that lands on a town whose tax base — like Colchester’s — is mostly homes.

The short version: the same arithmetic that raised nearly every Norwich bill 27% produces something far milder here, because East Hampton has little commercial base to shift taxes away from — homes already carry 77% of the list. For how that mechanism works lever by lever, see How a Revaluation Moves Your Bill, or compare Norwich’s measured outcome and the Colchester 2026 what-if.

Home assessments (measured)
+51.1%
residential grand list $968M → $1,464M at the Oct 1, 2025 revaluation; whole taxable base +40.2%.
Mill rate
39.71 → 28.22
adopted (−29%); collections rise 1.5% at that rate, so it is close to levy-neutral but not neutral. Break-even: +40.7%.
Median home (estimated)
≈ +8.3%
≈ +$548/yr on the median home ($170.4k assessed, $6,766 bill today); 86% of homes pay more, 14% pay less.
Car taxes
−13%
rate effect: cars were pinned at the 32.46 cap under the old 39.71 rate; at 28.22 they ride the lower rate.

What happened, in plain English

1. Assessments were frozen at 2020 values for five years. Between revaluations, Connecticut assessments don’t move with the market. East Hampton’s were set in October 2020 — before most of the boom — while sale prices kept climbing until homes were selling for more than double their assessed values (the 2023–24 median sales ratio was 0.44 against a legal target of 0.70).

2. The 2025 revaluation reset everything to market at once. Home assessments rose ~51% town-wide. That does not raise the town’s total tax collections — the mill rate falls in step. At the adopted 28.22 (down from 39.71), the town collects about 1.5% more — close to the same dollars, but not identical.

3. What changes is each property’s share. A home’s bill rises only if its assessment rose more than the break-even (+40.7%). Because homes as a class rose ~51% while the small commercial base rose ~21% and cars and equipment barely moved, homes’ slice of the pie grew from 77.4% to 83.5% — so the typical home pays somewhat more, homes that rose the most (mostly lower-priced homes and condos) pay noticeably more, and homes that rose least (mostly the most expensive fifth) land near flat or lower.

The tax base, before and after — measured

Share of East Hampton’s net taxable grand list by class, GL Oct 1, 2024 vs. GL Oct 1, 2025 (CT OPM). Class shares use gross class values over the net grand list and are approximate.

What it shows: the same class shift as Norwich — homes up, everything else down as a share — but from a much higher starting point: homes went from 77.4% to 83.5% of the base (+6.1 points), versus Norwich’s 51.1% to 61.5% (+10.3). With only ~6% of the base in commercial and industrial property, there was never much tax to shift from — which is why the typical bill change here is a fraction of Norwich’s.
Grand list classGL Oct 1, 2024GL Oct 1, 2025Change
Residential (homes)$968,376,149$1,463,539,920+51.1%
Apartments (5+ units)$7,632,640$16,859,400+120.9%
Commercial$27,974,479$72,980,430+160.9%
Industrial$46,369,915$17,097,910−63.1%
Vacant land$26,616,490$6,099,680−77.1%
Motor vehicles (net)$126,546,950$132,938,060+5.1%
Personal property (net)$52,738,790$50,602,310−4.1%
Net taxable grand list$1,250,395,106$1,753,259,070+40.2%

Gross assessed values by class except where marked net. Commercial and industrial moved between those two lines in the town’s records (2020 and 2025 reclassifications) — combined they rose +21.2%. The vacant-land drop largely reflects reclassification at the revaluation, not value loss. Source: CT OPM, Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), 2025 rows.

Estimated distribution of bill changes — who pays more, who pays less

Estimated change in the annual bill across 5,156 East Hampton homes at the adopted 28.22 mills, in 2.5-point bins. Red: bill rises; blue: falls. Estimate: the town-wide +51.1% and both mill rates are measured; each home’s individual move is estimated by carrying the home-to-home spread measured in Norwich, matched by value rank. Actual parcel results arrive when the state publishes its GL 2025 extract (~fall 2026).

What it shows: unlike Norwich — where the cushion between the median rise (+61%) and the break-even (+27%) was so wide that 98.9% of homes paid more — East Hampton’s cushion is thin: median rise ~+51% against a +40.7% break-even. The estimated result is roughly 86% of homes paying more and 14% paying less — a revaluation with genuine winners and losers.

Who pays more — the tilt toward less expensive homes, two ways

Estimated median bill change by value fifth (GL 2024 assessed value), at 28.22 mills. Two independent estimates: East Hampton’s own measured tilt (from 592 arm’s-length sales, 2021–24 — how far each segment’s prices ran ahead of its frozen assessments) and the Norwich parcel tilt carried over by value rank.

Both estimates agree on the shape: increases concentrate at the entry level — condos (sales imply ~+53% assessment rises), mobile homes, and lower-priced houses — while the most valuable fifth lands near flat at a levy-neutral rate. East Hampton’s own sales tilt is gentler than Norwich’s, which compresses the spread; the median home is ≈ +6–7% either way.

Check an East Hampton home

Old and new assessments are on your revaluation notice or the town’s property record cards (Assessment History on the field card); the town also runs its own FY 2027 estimator. Real-estate levy only, before exemptions.

28.22 = the rate adopted at the August 26 referendum. Edit it to test another.

Defaults: the median home at the town-wide +51.1% change. FY 2026 bill uses 39.71 mills.

Three towns, one mechanism

Norwich is measured; East Hampton is measured at the class level with the per-home spread estimated; Colchester 2026 is a scenario.

Norwich (GL 2023, measured)East Hampton (GL 2025)Colchester (GL 2026, scenario)
Homes’ share of base, before51.1%77.4%70.9%
Home assessments at the reval+62.0%+51.1%+45% / +62% scenarios
Homes’ share after61.5% (+10.3)83.5% (+6.1)~77–79% (+6 to +8)
Mill rate42.22 → 33.25 (levy +6.1%)39.71 → 28.22 adopted (levy +1.5%)29.92 → ~20.7–24.3
Median home bill+27.1% (+$1,064)≈ +8.3% (+$548) est.+8% to +19% by scenario
Homes paying more98.9%≈ 86% est.86–98% by scenario
Car taxesunchanged (at cap both years)rate −14%−24% to −36% scenarios
The pattern: the size of a town’s homeowner shift tracks its tax-base structure, not the size of its housing boom. Norwich’s half-commercial base turned a +62% housing move into a +27% median bill increase; East Hampton’s 77%-residential base turned +51% into single digits. Colchester sits between the two. Try the levers yourself on How a Revaluation Moves Your Bill.

How this was measured, and what is estimated

  1. Measured: class values and shares from CT OPM, Net Grand List by Town, 2011–2025 (webp-fgt3), GL 2024 and GL 2025 East Hampton rows; rates from the Town’s Annual Budget 2026-2027 page (FY 2026: 39.71; FY 2027: 28.22, the rate on the budget put to the August 26, 2026 referendum, used here as the adopted rate; the August 5 proposal was 27.82 and the July interim billing rate 27.79. As of September 3, 2026 that page had not posted the August 26 result or a permanent FY 2027 rate, and the Collector of Revenue page still listed 27.79; confirm against the town’s posted result or the Board of Finance’s rate-setting vote) and Assessor page (“Last Revaluation: 2020”; the 2025 revaluation applies to the July 2026 and January 2027 installments); CT OPM emyx-j53e (FY 2026 rate, MV cap) and Revaluation Years by Town (2025/2030/2035 cycle). At 28.22 the town collects +1.5% vs. FY 2026; at the 27.82 proposal it would have been +0.1% — both computed from the two grand lists.
  2. Estimated (labeled): per-home outcomes. The home roll is the state’s GL 2024 extract (rny9-6ak2; 5,156 homes, median assessed $170,375). The distribution carries the Norwich parcel-measured spread by value rank, rescaled to the measured +51.1%; the alternative tilt is measured from East Hampton’s own 2021–24 arm’s-length sales (5mzw-sjtu, segmented by assessed value — the overall sales-implied move, +49.9%, independently matches the +51.1% grand-list result). Validation of the town-wide arithmetic: the town’s own FY 2027 estimator example reproduces to within 0.01 points.
  3. Archived: raw extracts, the model, and notes in EastHamptonReval/ and RevalSegmentAnalysis/ in the project repository.