Numerous assessment appeals filed

The number of people appealing Charlottesville’s 2009 real-estate assessments has blown past the 300 mark. But despite the difficult economy’s toll on residents, the figures have not yet surpassed last year’s totals.

“A lot of people wait until the very end,” said city assessor Roosevelt Barbour, referring to when residents file their appeals.

As of Friday, the city had received 378 appeals to the assessments that were released last month, compared with 411 sent last year. Residents have until Tuesday to notify the assessor to be eligible for a review.

But the amount of appeals the city has collected has been steadily rising for the last few years. Barbour said in 2006 only 265 appeals were submitted, but the number jumped to 330 in 2007. Charlottesville’s 2007 figures demonstrated the still-bubbling real-estate market in the city, with the average assessments for existing homes rising about 16.2 percent. The spikes meant that most city homeowners saw hikes in their taxes for that year.

As city officials have pointed out, this year was far different from what was known as the norm in Charlottesville in terms of assessment growth. The most recent assessments showed that city-wide average growth in existing homes was a paltry 1.02 percent, compared with 4.2 percent growth last year and 16.2 percent two years ago.

But there were large fluctuations among the city’s individual neighborhoods. Greenbrier saw average declines of 10 percent, and others, such as Fifeville, saw an average growth of 11 percent among its existing housing stock.

Still, a large majority of residents will see no or only slight growth in the amount of taxes they will pay to fill city coffers. Real estate taxes are the city’s largest source of revenue, and the proposed fiscal 2010 budget expects the city to get $64,490 more from that tax than it will this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

City resident Colette Hall, president of the North Downtown Residents Association, said she hasn’t heard of any residents in her neighborhood appealing their assessments, largely because many of them expect to pay less in taxes next year. North Downtown’s existing home values dropped an average of 4 percent.

“I haven’t heard anything from any of our neighbors,” Hall said.

When assessments were first mailed out in January, Barbour said he thought the number of people contesting their letters this year would rise because, despite the economy, there would still be some residents who would be expecting their tax bills to increase. Though the proposed fiscal 2010 budget does not tinker with the current 95-cent tax rate, a 92.8-cent rate would need to be implemented for the average resident to see no change in their taxes next year.

“The economy, a lot of times, drives the amount of appeals,” Barbour said at the time.

Ivo Romenesko, a local real estate consultant and appraiser, said real estate assessments’ retroactive nature makes it so there are differences in current home values versus what they were over the course of the past year, as properties were being assessed by city officials to determine real estate tax revenues.

“There’s always some lag times,” he said.

Barbour said that like the wide assortment of assessment values seen across the city, the appeals are coming from a variety of neighborhoods.

“It’s still a mixed bag,” he said.