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New Castle County Must Determine Real Land Values

  • Writer: Christian Willauer
    Christian Willauer
  • Dec 2, 2025
  • 2 min read


There is something seriously wrong when a small neighborhood business is paying more property taxes than a brand-new $16 million development downtown.


Dominican Cafe, a family-run business in the Westside, has seen their school tax bill jump from $869 last year to $3,979 this year.


Humble Park is a 61 unit apartment building that opened in Jan. 2025 with base rents starting at $1,821 for a 1 bedroom. As a result of the reassessment, Humble Park's school taxes were reduced from $6,507 last year to $2,787 this year.


This isn't fair.


And check out their land values!


Dominican Cafe: $232,000 vs. Humble Park: $219,300


Humble Park's land, which is .29 of an acre, is ten times the size of Dominican Cafe's land, which is .04 of an acre. Yet Humble Park's land is assessed for LESS than Dominican Cafe's land. This makes no sense. The Humble Park location required acquisition of multiple parcels, including the purchase of three parcels that used to be part of a City-owned park. Surely Humble Park's land is worth a lot more than $219,300. And parcels of land in Wilmington's Westside that are .04 of an acre in size aren't selling for anything near the $232,000 that was assessed for Dominican Cafe's land.


These two properties are examples of a systematic inaccuracy in New Castle County's land assessments. New Castle County assessed the land of many commercial properties, no matter their size, at $232,000. This inflated the land assessments of many small businesses and deflated the land assessments of many big businesses in Wilmington. This isn't fair.


Solution: New Castle County needs to determine actual land values for different parts of the county and fix errors so each parcel's land assessment equals its fair market value.


What can you do? Elected leaders need to know that this issue really matters to us. Delaware is a small state, and many of us know our elected officials. Reach out to the people you know in government, and let them know that you want them to start immediately working on real solutions:


1. The City of Wilmington should Implement Homeowner Tax Abatement Program passed by Council last session to freeze the taxes of low- and moderate- income homeowners whose taxes increased by 50% or more as a result of the assessment at the amount of their last year's bill.

2. Wilmington and New Castle County should pass a similar program for small businesses.

3. New Castle County should redo land assessments so they equal fair market value.

4. The City and/or County should review the 100 or so commercial properties with large tax decreases, including getting third-party appraisals for a portion of them to test how accurate they are.

5. The City and/or County should review new development to make sure their assessments reflect fair market value. No one should be able to claim one value to get financing from a bank and another value to pay taxes.


Find the contact information for elected officials you might know here:

State Legislators: House: https://legis.delaware.gov/Chambers/House/AssemblyMembers and Senate: https://legis.delaware.gov/Chambers/Senate/AssemblyMembers

New Castle County Executive: ExecutiveOffice@newcastlede.gov


Dominican Cafe:

Assessment Info: https://www3.newcastlede.gov/parcel/Details/Default.aspx...


Humble Park:

Assessment Info:

 
 
 

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