BY SARA PAGLIANTE

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Commerce Bank founder and former CEO Vernon Hill attempted to cut the taxes on his Moorestown home in half but the courts valued his property at 39 percent more than the township's most recent $21 million assessment.

Moorestown is home to many million dollar mansions but Vernon Hill’s Villa Collina (Italian for ‘Hill House’) trumps them all. The house is 46,000 square feet, sits on 44 acres and is the largest private home in New Jersey, reported the Moorestown Patch.

Patrick DeAlmeida, the judge of the New Jersey Tax Court, recently rejected Hill's 2008 lawsuit asking him to cut in half the township's $21 million assessment, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. On the contrary, he believed that Hill’s property is worth $34 million – a whopping 39 percent more.

Because the township did not file a counterclaim asking the judge to reset the home’s assessment at $34 million, DeAlmeida upheld the original assessment so Hill and his wife Shirley will continue $394,000 in property tax they paid Moorestown last year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Inquirer reported that Hill's attorney, Steven Irwin of West Orange, N.J., said last Wednesday that Moorestown’s assessment of the property was $17 million, or half the judge's determination. Irwin says DeAlmeida calculated the value of the property based on the costs of construction rather than what the house could go for on the market. Irwin also believes that there is no real market value for the house because it would be almost impossible to sell.

He thinks Villa Collina was overbuilt for the area.

“Philadelphia-area multimillionaires opt for the Pennsylvania suburbs and most East Coast rock stars and Wall Street wizards choose to live close to New York,” said Irwin.

Moorestown's assessor, Dennis DeKlerk, however, said the new reassessments will not be certified until Feb. 15.