It's time for my annual look at changes in Equalized Valuation across New Jersey to get a partial estimate of changes in Equalization Aid for 2025-26 and to get a one-year snapshot data point on changes in NJ's real estate market and overall geography of wealth.
any questions, please contact stateaidguy@gmail.com
As mentioned in previous posts about this subject, Equalized Valuation is the market value of all the taxable property in a town. It is determined by a comparison of official assessments of properties to their sales prices. It is used to apportion county taxes, to apportion taxes within most regional school districts, and is half of the determination of Local Fair Share, which in turn is part of the calculation of Equalization Aid.
First, the big picture is that New Jersey's total Equalized Valuation grew healthily, from $1,744,722,902,678 to $1,906,359,422,846, a 9.3% gain that is nearly the same percentage as from 2023 to 2024, and only slightly less than the record from 2022 to 2023, when we gained over 11%.
Second, let's look at annual changes for our twenty-one counties:
Please notice that Atlantic County has been a large gainer. This is a huge contrast to the early 2010s when Atlantic City's Equalized Valuation collapsed in the wake of the casino meltdown there, when the Equalized Valuation fell from $55 million in 2010 to only $31 billion in 2019. However, Atlantic County's Equalized Valuation is still only $51 billion, which below what it was prior to the Great Recession and casino meltdown.
For Ocean County, it would be wrong to assume that it is all Lakewood, although Lakewood has reached $19.8 billion from $11.7 billion in 2020 (+69%). Toms River is actually up dramatically too, from $16.3 billion in 2020 to $25.5 billion for 2025 (+56%).
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Well, I was right that Jersey City's tax base would increase, from a Local Fair Share of $414 million to to $615 million in 2024-25, but that was not sufficient to bring Jersey City's Equalization Aid to zero, although JC's Equalization Aid fall from $149 million in 2019-20 to $60 million in 2024-25.
What I am more surprised by is that Jersey City's growth has leveled off and actually dipped, by $999 million. In theory, that would qualify Jersey City for an additional $6.3 million in Equalization Aid.
By contrast, Newark's Equalized Valuation has soared recently, from $15 billion for 2020 to $28 billion for 2024. Elizabeth and Paterson have had pretty strong growth lately.
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Estimated ("Guesstimated"? )Implications for Equalization Aid
For Equalization Aid, recall that the formula for an individual school district is:
Adequacy Budget - Local Fair Share = Equalization Aid
And the 2024-25 formula for Local Fair Share is:
(Aggregate Income x 0.050601493 + Equalized Valuation x 0.012707978) / 2
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See Also:
2021 Equalized Valuations Show Economic Trends, Forecast State Aid Changes
Changes in Equalized Valuation for FY2019
The Divergent Fates of NJ's Big Cities
2016 Equalized Valuations Out (for tax year 2017)
Biggest Real Estate Gains, Losses in NJ
Two Cheers for County Taxes!
New Jersey and Its Neighbors Job Growth, County by County
2017 Changes in Equalized Valuation: the Urban Core Grows
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