The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
Led by steep declines on pricey homes in Ocean View, downtown and Larchmont, residential real estate assessments will fall by 4.9 percent.
Overall assessments, including commercial and industrial property, will decline 3.6 percent, Real Estate Assessor Deborah Bunn told the City Council on Tuesday.
It will be the first decline in more than two decades.
The decline means that most Norfolk homeowners will see a modest reduction in real estate taxes in the fiscal year that begins July 1. That assumes the City Council does not raise real estate taxes this spring. Bunn said assessment notices will be mailed to 68,000 homes and businesses Friday.
Her numbers include new construction. Assessments on existing homes, excluding new construction, will drop about 6 percent, she said.
Bunn said affluent waterfront neighborhoods saw the largest declines.
"The more expensive homes took the biggest hit," she said. "It's the homes that are more medium- or moderately-priced that are selling."
Virginia Beach Assessor Jerry Banagan, who said he expects a 5.75 percent decline in residential real estate, is the only other assessor in South Hampton Roads to announce an estimate.
Bunn said not all the recent decline in real estate prices is reflected in the assessments.
She said some neighborhoods were under-assessed last year, and if housing prices have dropped in those neighborhoods, assessments may not have fallen.
In all, 193 of 268 neighborhoods will see reduced assessments and 53 will show gains. Of those with gains, 12 neighborhoods will have increases of 1 percent or greater and 41 gains of less than 1 percent. Twenty-two neighborhoods will see no change in their assessments
Some 31 neighborhoods, including eight in the Ocean View and Willoughby areas, will have double-digit losses.
The Shore Drive west waterfront (22 percent) and Shore Drive west (20 percent) neighborhoods in Ocean View will have the steepest declines. Willoughby will fall by 19 percent and the downtown College Place area by 18 percent.
The city's real estate tax base dropped in value from $19.1 billion to $18.4 billion. Although there is little vacant land in Norfolk, assessments will plummet, with vacant residential land falling by 7.3 percent and vacant industrial and commercial land by nearly 6.5 percent.
The assessments that go into effect July 1 are generated from sales throughout 2009. In previous years, the cut off day for setting assessments was July 1, or a year before they went into effect.
Bunn changed Norfolk's system at the request of the council.
"This is what we asked her to do, and I think it's a much better system," Mayor Paul Fraim said.
Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com
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Who Are You Kidding !!!!!
Upon my inquiry I determined that Norfolk uses a model for assessing appraisal values that are on home sales for the previous 18 months. I asked officials why wasn't a more current model within 3-6 months used and I got the city hall half step. If a CEO had to make a decision on data that was 18 months old, he would be looking for other employment.....perhaps for the City of Norfolk. You can bet the farm that the City will now raise the tax rates to make up the difference in revenue rather than making internal cuts. Take a walk around city hall and look at employees doing nothing behind thier desks rather than surfing the www. Look at how many city empoyees it takes to fix a water main break, 12-20 with 2 people actually working !!!!! Oh well, somebody has got to pay for the light rail system. Maybe I can get a job estimating light rail cost for the city or better yet be the project manager !!!!! I will vote against every standing incumbent the next election to include Paul Fram. The Three Stoges could do a better job.
King!
You can be assured, King Paul will get his money!
tax bill
The tax bill you got yesterday was for the 3rd quarter of 2009/10 fiscal year. The article said the 2010 assessment notices weren't going to be mailed until Friday.
Got my tax bill yesterday
Got my tax bill yesterday and it went up. Of course I'm in the "up scale" OV area.
Real Estate Tax.
VA Beach.
Mine increased! :(
increase tax rates?
Now what will happen is our city council will use this to increase the tax rate. Therefore the homeowner will not get a break. They are already talking about increasing the tax rate in Va Beach and Chesapeake. If this be the case, I consider it as to robbing the citizens once about ! There needs to be accountability within our cities as to the spending and taxing method ! Stop raising our taxes (period). Give us a refund for the years you overcharged us ! I hope I am wrong on the tax rate increase, but you people watch and see what happens !!
I got mine in Virginia Beach Monday and
it is the same as it was last year, to the dollar.
Its not much
It could have been more, but I'll take what I can get. At last some fiscal sanity is coming to Norfolk.
Real Estate Assessments
Take the issue of rising property taxes to your local elected officials and hold them accountable for your tax bill. What you actually pay in real estate taxes is NOT a function of the local assessor's office. Its function is to establish valuation from which local officials set the tax rate. I am a certified real property assessor although I do not practice in Virginia. I suggest that this would be a good time for the Pilot and other papers to do a public service and explain just what the standards of practice are for tax assessments. Local assessors take a very bad rap for increases in real estate taxes. The millage rates are set either by state law and/or by the vote of elected representatives of local municipalities/counties. Generally speaking, states maintain an oversight board to validate the procedures and samples local assessors utilize to determine the status of local neighborhood assessments within each community. In all cases, there are procedures for individual taxpayers to challenge assessments based on evidence from arms length sales of comparable properties. It is amazing to me that the myth of the assessor determining your tax bills remains.
Assessments
Regarding the comment "Assessments can not be done outside the standards of the professional organizations, and these were not done that way. There are no sales to support the decrease in assessed values in Norfolk. We are not in Detroit. The Norfolk Assessor is apparently aware of the State action to withhold ABC profits from all localities, but they do not realize the larger impact of decreasing assessments on Dom Power and....."
It is insultingly ignorant to make such bold statements without having the facts to back them up. Assessments are based on sales, the values are not just made up. Assessments are monitored yearly by the Dept.of Taxation - "bogus values" wouldn't pass that analysis.