In the middle of the worst housing crisis America has ever known, miracles are occurring across Mecklenburg County.
Housing values are shooting up, doubling even, in affluent areas likely to generate fat county tax bills, according to county tax value appraisers. Either that or the county has systematically, perhaps even deliberately overvalued suburban and higher end properties to the point of absurdity to plug its budget holes.
Some 200 residents of the Cornelius/Lake Norman area stormed the county commission meeting the other night, demanding to know why, over the course of the worst housing recession this country has ever known, their property values have boomed according to county appraisers. They are demanding an independent audit of the appraisal and appeals process that led to their current property valuations.
Here’s why:
Frank Worden said his tax bill for his Cornelius house near the lake, went from $4,300 to $6,112. “I had to take out a special loan to pay it,” he said. “I’m retired and I can’t afford my house anymore.”
Medlin asked residents in the audience to raise their hand if the value of their homes went up by 30 percent. Most did. Eventually, she went up to 100 percent, and dozens were still raising their hands.
“We are reasonable people,” said Medlin. “We just want what’s fair and equitable.”
In the more than a decade I’ve been covering local government, I’ve never seen homeowners storm a county commission meeting in mass over home values. For anyone at all to show up to complain is unusual.
Apparently this is going on all over the county, and has reached a point of such absurdity and distrust that homeowners now feel that independent outsiders must be brought in to verify that county appriasers and their appraisal process can be trusted.
My husband and I are currently living with
the hell that is the flawed county tax appraisal system. As a trained housing appraiser (I went through all the state required training, passed the test to get my certification, but never got my license) I can assure you something is badly wrong here.
My two rental houses in Plaza Midwood more than doubled in value during the recession, county tax appraisers claim. They are now supposedly worth $166,000, rather than about $80,000, as they were before the revaluation last year. So our tax bill has gone up $300 on each, pushing them from solid profitability, where they have been for nearly a decade, to the red. We are now losing money.
One problem. Three separate realtors, two of whom make their living selling homes in the Midwood area, say the houses should be put on the market for $115,000 to $120,000, which is what we are listing them for, not $166,000. And they’ve provided the comps to support this. (A comp is another sale in the area. These let you see what houses are worth per square foot.) You just can’t sell them for more based on comps in the aream, they say, and they are right. The county’s tax value on my homes is so absurd in could have only been generated on some psychadelic magical mystery tour.
So what kind of nutty math did county tax appriasers use to arrive at these values if the comps show much lower home values? I’d love to know. So apparently would residents of Cornelius and Lake Norman.
As I wrote before, a rental house that generates $300 a month in profit like mine did is a rarity. Most have much thinner profit margins. Given that, I can’t imagine how the county appraisers’ creative math has devastated the other landlords in the area, much less those who were renting their homes to keep from going into foreclosure. We’ll never know how many families this devastated or how many foreclosures this generated after the county tax bill became the straw that broke the homeowner’s bank account. All I know is that taxes are now so high that our renters have been pushed out of the neighborhood and we’re being forced to sell.
And that the math, no matter how I calculate it, just doesn’t add up.
But I can guarantee this — county leaders will never allow a truly independent appraisal review. They can’t afford to.
