Property values jump 12 percent in 2005

Between 2004 and 2005, total assessed valuation of real property in Greene County jumped 12 percent, from $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion.

The increase is a result, according to Greene County Assessor Richard Kessinger, of an effort by his department to have appraised values more accurately reflect their actual fair market values.

The reassessments have a definite impact on county coffers; the county derived about 12.7 percent, or $4.4 million, of its $34.4 million in 2005 revenues from property taxes, which include both real property and personal property such as vehicles and agricultural equipment, according to 2005 revenue estimates. (See graph.)

More value equals more taxes, which generally aren’t greeted too kindly.

Downtown property owners, in particular, felt the sting in 2005, as most property values increased by 20 percent, with some double or even triple their previous year levels.

Property values are reassessed in odd years, but property was not reassessed in 2003 due to the implementation of a new computer system in the assessors’ office. So technically, what looks like a drastic jump in property values in 2005 is actually representation of four years of growth. Going back to 1990, a look at county valuations shows jumps every two to four years – sometimes with an increase of as much as 25 percent.

Kirk Heyle, local real estate counselor and head of Heyle Realtors & Counseling Service, said the increases have dealt a blow to businesspeople who own multiple properties – and especially those with rental properties.

“As a property owner, I don’t just see more in taxes on my house,” he said. “I see 120 properties that we own that are affected. When you find you’ve got that much to pay for taxes and insurance, owners may not be able to pay debt service and start losing their properties.”

However, Kessinger noted that not many property owners seem to disagree with their 2005 assessed valuations. Or at least, they don’t disagree strongly enough to call Kessinger’s office and complain. Kessinger said about 8 percent of property owners called regarding 2005 assessed values, compared to about 20 percent in 2001.

Doing the legwork

The increase in assessed values is the result of a project for which employees of the assessor’s office went around to every property in the county – residential, commercial and industrial, occupied and vacant – and updated the value of each.

The updating was done primarily because of the new computer system Kessinger said.

“With the new computer system, to put in a lot of data that was not as clean and accurate as they could get didn’t make sense,” Kessinger said. “So what they decided to do was to get out, walk all these properties and make sure the data was as good as they could get it.”

Updating the values is a tough task, Kessinger says, especially considering some of the restrictions placed on the county’s residential and commercial appraisal departments.

“A private appraiser has the permission of the (property) owner to go inside and do a complete physical inspection,” Kessinger said. “The other thing is, particularly with the residential properties, a fee appraiser has access to the Multilist data that we’re not allowed to have. We gather all of the sales information we can regarding a neighborhood, but we know we never have all of it.”

School funding

One group that keeps a sharp eye on changes in property value is the public school system, which depends on tax levies based on those property values for 45 percent of its funding.

While the drastic valuation increase came as a shock to many property owners, it allowed Springfield schools to roll back 14 cents of an operating levy passed in 2005.

That’s one way, according to School Board President Michael Hoeman, that the increase helped the schools.

“We were able to raise the money we needed to do those things we told the voters we were going to do without enacting the entire levy increase. That was what the rollback was about,” Hoeman said. “It’s saying, ‘Look, you were willing to pay this before, but we didn’t need all those funds.’ We’re saying now that we do need those funds for capital projects.”

Additional funds received from last year’s operating levy could not be used for building improvements, because capital funds and operating funds, by law, are not interchangeable.

The Springfield R-XII School District is asking for an 18-cent bond levy on the April 4 ballot. That levy, if passed, could create more than $96 million in funds for building expansions and improvements.

Assessing the situation

Want to figure your property taxes? The tax on residential property is based on the county’s assessed value for the property. Assessed value is defined by state statute as 19 percent of the appraised value.

For a house appraised by the county to be worth $100,000, the assessed value would be $19,000. At the current property tax level – 33 cents per $100 of assessed valuation – that homeowner would pay $96.90 in property tax annually.[[In-content Ad]]