In January 2024, about 100 frustrated taxpayers packed Conway's town hall over a tax bill spike that a recent property revaluation was supposed to prevent, not cause. Selectmen listened. A homeowner named Jim Prue asked questions that nobody at the meeting could fully answer. By March, he and his wife Karen had done the math themselves, and it didn't sit right.
That town hall meeting is the reason anyone comparing property taxes across Mount Washington Valley towns should look twice at Conway's number. The rate you'll see quoted on a listing sheet or a tax calculator is real, but it's a snapshot of a system the state's own appeals board has since ruled out of balance, with the fix not landing until the 2027 tax year. If you're weighing Conway against Bartlett, Jackson, or Madison on tax rate alone, you're comparing a stable figure to one that's mid-correction.
The Rate on the Listing Page Isn't the Whole Story
A New Hampshire town's tax rate is simple arithmetic: the money the town, county, and school districts need to raise, divided by the town's total assessed property value, expressed as dollars per $1,000. When a townwide revaluation raises the total assessed value, the rate per $1,000 tends to fall, even if individual tax bills don't.
That's exactly what happened in Conway. The town's base tax rate, covering municipal, county, and school levies, dropped from $17.08 per $1,000 in 2022 to $10.18 per $1,000 in 2023, following a revaluation, according to reporting by the Concord Monitor. On paper, that looks like relief. For many residential owners, it wasn't. The same reporting noted that many residential assessments rose considerably in that revaluation, so a lower rate applied to a much higher assessed value still produced a heftier bill.
The Prues' question was narrower and more pointed: did commercial property go up in the revaluation the way residential property did? Their answer, backed eventually by a state board, was no.
The Math the Town Hadn't Drawn a Line Under
Jim Prue told selectmen in March 2024 that roughly $109 million in assessed value in Conway was unaccounted for in the tax rate calculation, which he estimated translated to $1,253,272 in tax burden shifted onto residential property owners, per the Concord Monitor's coverage of that meeting. He and Karen filed a formal petition with the New Hampshire Board of Tax and Land Appeals asking for a full reassessment.
The board didn't dismiss it. In a February 2025 interim order, the BTLA found that commercial properties sold in Conway between August 2023 and August 2024 had been assessed at about 77% of market value, well below the state's acceptable range of 90 to 110%, according to NHPR's reporting on the case. The board also flagged a lack of transparency in how commercial properties had been assessed and problems with the town's contracted inspection process. Within days, the town's assessing firm, Corcoran Consulting of Wolfeboro, terminated its own contract with Conway, citing staffing changes.
None of that is a rumor circulating at the transfer station. It's a documented finding, and it means the "unaccounted for" value the Prues flagged wasn't a rounding error. It was a structural gap between what commercial property was worth and what it was taxed on, and residential owners, whose homes were assessed much closer to true market value, picked up the difference.
A Rate That Fell While Some Bills Climbed
Here's the rate history, laid out plainly:
| Tax Year | Base Rate (per $1,000) | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $17.08 | Pre-revaluation |
| 2023 | $10.18 | Post-revaluation, commercial later found under-assessed |
| 2025 (preliminary) | $11.54 | Up from $11.32 in 2024, a 2% increase |
The 2025 figure comes from selectmen's December 2025 meeting, where they set a preliminary rate of $11.54 per $1,000, up from $11.32 the year before, an increase the Conway Daily Sun put at just under 2%. Run that against a $400,000 assessed home: at $11.32 the town portion is $4,528, at $11.54 it's $4,616, an $88 difference before county and school levies are added.
That table tells a simple story if you only read the rate. Read the underlying finding from the BTLA alongside it, and it tells a different one: the rate ticked back up in 2025 while the commercial under-assessment the state identified was still uncorrected. The residential share of the burden that the Prues calculated at over $1.2 million hadn't been rebalanced. It was still baked into the number selectmen approved.
Why the Fix Waits Until 2027
Given clear findings of under-assessment, you might expect the board to order an immediate correction. It didn't. In its July 2025 reassessment order, the BTLA concluded it would be unwise to order a reassessment for the 2025 or 2026 tax years given ongoing concerns with the physical data on commercial and industrial properties, and instead ordered the reassessment for the 2027 tax year. The order noted Conway's plan to convert its aging assessing software, Univers, to a newer system called Vision starting in fall 2026, ahead of a full cyclical revaluation with a statistical update in 2027.
Town Manager John Eastman told the Conway Daily Sun the town would comply fully with the board's order. That's a reasonable, orderly path for a town rebuilding its assessing process from a broken contract. It also means two more tax cycles, 2025 and 2026, run on a base the state has already said skews too far toward residential owners before the reset arrives.
The Prues, for their part, weren't thrilled about the timeline. In response to the order, they said:
"It's unfortunate that a reassessment order in 2025 wasn't issued, as commercial tax burden will continue to be shifted to residential taxpayers for another year, but we understand the order in light of the scathing findings in the document. We thank the BTLA for the thoroughness of their investigation."
That's the voice of someone who won the argument and still has to wait for the outcome.
What This Means If You're Buying in Conway Now
None of this means Conway is a bad place to buy. It means the tax rate you're handed today is a number with an expiration date attached, and the direction it moves after 2027 depends on how the reassessment redistributes value between commercial and residential parcels townwide. A correction that brings commercial assessments up toward true market value could, in theory, ease pressure on residential rates relative to where they'd otherwise land. It could also simply reset the base without changing who pays what, depending on how individual properties are reappraised. The BTLA's order doesn't promise residential relief. It promises a more accurate assessment, which is a different thing.
For anyone comparing Conway to a town like Jackson or Bartlett on rate alone, that distinction matters. Those towns' current rates reflect a settled assessment cycle. Conway's reflects a cycle the state has already ruled distorted, mid-repair.
A few things worth asking before you write an offer here:
- Ask when the specific parcel was last physically inspected, not just when the town's last townwide revaluation was completed.
- Ask whether the property is residential, commercial, or mixed use, since the BTLA's findings were specific to commercial and industrial assessments, not residential ones.
- Budget for the possibility that your assessment could move in either direction once the 2027 cyclical revaluation with full statistical update takes effect, rather than assuming today's assessed value is a fixed number for the life of your ownership.
Conway's assessing office, currently listed under Assistant Assessor Corie Hilton, keeps searchable assessment records if you want to see a specific parcel's history before you go further.
FAQ
Will my Conway tax bill jump when the 2027 reassessment happens? It's not possible to say in advance. The BTLA order calls for a full statistical update and cyclical revaluation, which resets assessed values based on then-current market data. Whether any individual bill rises, falls, or stays flat depends on how that property's new assessment compares to the townwide average, not on the reassessment happening at all.
Should I wait until after 2027 to buy in Conway? That's a personal financial decision, not one this post can make for you. What's useful to know now is that the number on today's listing sheet reflects a base the state has already flagged as skewed toward residential owners, so it shouldn't be treated as a stable long-term comparison point against towns that aren't mid-correction.
Does this affect North Conway village the same way it affects the rest of town? North Conway village sits inside the Town of Conway's boundaries and is covered by the same municipal tax rate and the same BTLA order. The commercial under-assessment findings applied to commercial and industrial properties sold townwide between August 2023 and August 2024, not to a single village or district.
Property tax mechanics rarely make it into a listing description, but they shape what a home actually costs you to hold for the next several years. If you're weighing a purchase in Conway, North Conway, or anywhere else in the valley and want a straight read on what a specific property's tax history actually shows, Pinkham Real Estate can walk through it with you parcel by parcel. Contact our team to start your Mount Washington Valley search.