Photo: Belmont Board of Assessors’: (from left) Anthony Leccese, Mark Paolillo, and Daniel Dargon

With property values barely keeping up with inflation and the burden of heavy debt exclusion costs, Belmont property owners will see their Fiscal Year ’26 tax rate increase to $11.51 per thousand dollars from last years rate of $11.36, according to the Board of Assessors’ recommendations approved at the Belmont Select Board’s annual tax classificaton hearing.

The combination of a softening residential real estate prices, the yearly Proposition 2 1/2 increase to the tax levy and the impact of 11 debt exclusions – the Beech Street Senior Center, the Wellington Elementary School, the Underwood Pool, the fire station, five bond segments of the Middle and High School and the library and the sports facility totalling $138.9 million – which makes up approximately 12 percent of the total tax rate will result in the annual tax bill for an “average” Belmont single family residential house nudging up to the $20,000 level, reaching $19,580.

According to the Assessors’ analysis, the average value of a single family house in Belmont is $1,701,064, an increased of $51,700 from fiscal year 2025 when it stood at $1.65 million. The average value of a single family house statewide is $762,345 as of July 2025, according to Lamacchia Realty.

At the Monday, Dec. 1 meeting, Assessor’s Chair Dan Dargon said the appointed board was continuing its long-standing position rejecting seperate, or split, rates for residential and commercial properties, and not adopting a residential exemption for property owners.

Dargon said since commercial, industrial and personal property real estate makes up just 5.3 percent of Belmont’s property base, a split rate would not raise any more in taxes.

“Shifting a tax burden is not going to significantly benefit residences and you can adversely hurt commercial properties,” said Dargon, who said the town would need a commercial base of between 10 to 20 percent before “you start a shift.”

Unlike past years, residential exemptions has garnered the attention of residents and the Select Board. Residential exemption is a local-option property tax reduction that shifts the tax burden from primary-residence owners to owners of secondary homes, investment properties, and higher-valued homes.

As the Board Chair Matt Taylor noted, the exemption allows homeowners to deduct a fix amount off the property’s value, so owner occupied homes with lower accessed values will get more off their taxes, and shifting taxes to larger rental properties and high end homes. For example, a property valued at $850,000 would see a $1,121.66 reduction to their tax bill with a 10 percent exemption, while a property assessed at $2 million will see an increase of nearly $292.

Taylor said as the town encourages transit-oriented housing and condos through the MBTA Communities Act and the Belmont Center Overlay plan, “a homeowner deduction or residential exemption would encourage those apartments to be owner occupied,” which Dargon and Board member Mark Paolillo both agreed was “a really good point.”

But Select Board member Elizabeth Dionne warned of “unattended consequences” of a policy change that pushes the town to build condos and convert apartments units to condominums. “If you increase your number of condos, each would get a significantly larger percentage of the residential exemption so you might actually end up shifting your burden [to higher valued houses] that you didn’t anticipate.”