So let’s get this straight. According to the UPoR — which comes late to the story, but with access frankly no one else can approach — Mecklenburg County officials are now on the record dropping their residential valuation prediction by 33 percent compared to the one the county offered up just 90 days ago.
This is a staggering admission.
This means that the assumptions county appraisers were in the field with for most of this year have been proven completely wrong. Their is no way sustain — given the data — an expectation of a 12 to 13 percent average increase in home valuations. Even the “new” expectation of a 8 to 9 percent increase could contain an upside bias of up to 5 percent given the way the county has treated distressed sales. And as we’ve noted before another key — 09-10 sales at a lower price point than 06-07 sales of the same properties.
And let’s be clear — the home market is no more a “moving target” now than it was back 2003. The difference is that it is moving downward in many neighborhoods — county appraisers seem to be dancing around this fact. However, it does seem the county is moving very late in the reval cycle to try to address the distressed sale issue, which cannot be ignored in neighborhoods where basically the only sales are distressed sales, which by definition then sets a lower value floor for the neighborhood.
But we have to correct Hyong Yi, Mecklenburg’s management and budget director. Exactly no one is hoping to pay more taxes to the county. “There are people hoping for their property to be more valuable,” Yi, told the UPoR.
Only if the county commission cuts the property tax rate.
