Apparently property appeals are down
and local tax rates are expected to drop. If you didn't see it, we
ran a story Saturday,
right smack here.
A few things of note.
This year roughly 7,500 protests were
filed either online, over the telephone or in person during a
two-week informal appeals phase that wrapped up earlier this month.
The changes equated to a $30 million cut in assessments, which amount
to about a $708,000 reduction in county tax dollars that the
Trustee’s Office would be on the hook for collecting if not for the
change.
Some folks wondered why the office
could be off by so much.
Well, here's the deal, I suppose.
The state every four years requires the
assessor's office to estimate a value for each of the 193,437 real
parcels in Knox County. To figure out the amount, officials use a
“mass appraisal” system, a method uses a plethora of data,
including some of it tied to the physical characteristic of the land,
nearby home sales and vacancy rates that look at multiple parcels,
sometimes up to more than a 1,000 pieces of land at one time.
The process changes, though, once a
property owner files an appeal. Then, appraisers work one-on-one with
the person.
So, it's a lot easier when you're
dealing with one piece of property and not 1,000 pieces.
On a side note, officials said that
those who filed appeals online used stronger documentation and
presented a better case. Appraisers then had a chance to go back and
look at the information, look at the sales and look at the entire
area.
In a few cases, though, officials said
they did find instances where the square footage was off completely.
That happened at a condo complex. So, mess up once and the entire
place needed to be corrected.
Also, I've heard a number of complaints
from residents, talking about how their neighbor's property was
assessed at a different rate, yet they have the same size houses.
Well, that's on paper.
Jim Weaver, the second-in-command over
at the assessor's office, said that owners pretty much need to focus
on the property they own – and not what their neighbor has. For
example, he said a 2,000-square foot single-level house is worth more
than a 2,000-square foot home broken into a 1,500-square foot main
level and a 500-square foot basement.
Couple other things.
Property Assessor Phil Ballard said
that there's also been a lot of new growth. He said that a third of
it that's taken place in the five years that he's held the post
actually occurred last year. He noted the development of Costco on
Lovell Road, and Publix stores in Turkey Creek and Northshore Town
Center as prime examples.
“You can look around and there's
construction on every corner,” he said. “There's a lot of promise
going on right now.”
When asked what upset residents the
most during the appeals process, Weaver said he was surprised.
“You know the
one complaint I heard this time around that I head never head before
was from people who were concerned that their values went down,”
Weaver said. “I personally took 10 to 15 calls and they would say
that 'this is my life savings,' and then the value goes down. We
don't make up the values. We just capture what the market is telling
us.”
