Thursday, August 2, 2012

Property tax appraisals spark outcry
 
Thank you to Bobby Tedder of Neighbor Newspapers for covering the property tax issue. The following article appeared in the paper earlier this summer. 
 
Residents of the Brookhaven Gardens subdivision are decrying substantive spikes in their 2012 property appraisals.

“We’ve had discussions and have shared our tax bills with each other … there is a lot of anger in the neighborhood over it,” Brookhaven Gardens resident Andy Peters said.

Peters’ assessment went up $57,000, or 10 percent, from last year.

“It’s just unbelievable … one of my neighbor’s went up $190,000 and it’s not even the biggest house in the neighborhood,” said Peters, a real estate agent.

DeKalb chief appraiser Calvin Hicks said the latest appraisals do not represent a single-year bump.

Until this year, the state had frozen assessments for the past four years — thus, maintaining home values at 2008 levels. As a result, some homeowners have seen four years worth of appreciation.

“We’ve been under a moratorium and couldn’t reflect any appreciation in four years,” Hicks said.

Peters and the subdivision’s other 50 or so homeowners say the county’s math still does not add up.

“According to DeKalb County, the assessments are based off comparable sales … we don’t understand how they came up with these numbers,” Peters said.

Another point of contention for residents is the county’s handling of a similar situation in the North Lake area, he said.

“DeKalb County admitted making mistakes and have gone back to reduce those assessments … it should be obvious that they got it wrong here,” said Peters. “We want somebody to take ownership and make it right … instead, the only answer we get is, ‘Appeal your taxes.’’’

Hicks acknowledged that his office had identified areas of concern where possibly problematic notices were sent — the red flags either raised by it or affected property owners — and has since made a “number of revisions.”

“Yes, we have discovered some areas that need to be reviewed and we’ve revised those parcels,” Hicks said. “Those [only] account for two to three percent of the total parcels we sent notices on.”

Assessment notices were sent out May 29. Of the 230,000 distributed county-wide, DeKalb had only received about 5,000 appeals as of last week, Hicks said.

“You don’t have a [tax] digest that doesn’t have some errors,” Hicks said. “But, you have the right to initiate an appeal — there’s a process in place. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here.”

Residents have until July 13 to appeal their assessment.

Read more: NeighborNewspapers.com - Property tax appraisals spark outcry

Friday, June 15, 2012

11 Alive Covers High Brookhaven Appraisals

To watch to the video, please click on the link below:

www.brookhaven.11alive.com/news/news/120847-homeowners-stunned-appraisals-jump-4-years-1-year

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. -- In DeKalb County, it's war, now.
Homeowners in and around the Brookhaven Gardens neighborhood are finding out that DeKalb County is not going to do for them what it's doing for other homeowners.
The county will not lower their giant, six-figure increases in their 2012 property appraisals, even though the county just admitted bungling appraisals on thousands of homes elsewhere in the county, appraising them far above their market value. The county is correcting those appraisals.
But DeKalb County's Chief Appraiser Calvin Hicks is saying that homeowners in Brookhaven Gardens, around 50 of them, deserve their increased appraisals, this year.
Natalie Cheney's home, for example, is suddenly worth $200,000 more since last year. A 48 percent increase. In this market?
"Yeah, it's shocking," she said as she showed her appraisal notice.
"It's obvious there was a mistake made," said Homeowner Stephanie Miller, whose appraisal increased 26 percent.
"The values we have on those properties are within reason," said Chief Appraiser Calvin Hicks on Thursday.
Hicks said homeowners in Brookhaven Gardens don't realize that, until this year, the state had been capping assessment-increases, and holding down home-values artificially, at 2008 levels.
This year, the cap is off.
So the homeowners -- in neighborhoods where Hicks believes the market values increased -- are suddenly seeing four-years of appreciation in a single year.
The way Hicks sees it, they haven't been paying enough taxes.
The homeowners who gathered in front of Stephanie Miller's home Thursday are surprised that Hicks would say that.
"That's ridiculous," said Dennis Hinton.
"Based on what numbers?" asked Karen Smythe.
"The market values have not shown appreciable appreciation since 2008," Hinton said. "He's way off base, way off base."
"I think we're all just kind of wondering how are they getting these numbers," said Andy Peters, who is a real estate agent. "Where are they coming from?"
So the homeowners have filed their appeals and are getting their evidence together, preparing for war, now -- they see this as a fight to hold onto their homes -- a war with the county that may last months, at least.
Hicks said his team looked at sales of two homes "ranging between $483,000 and $550,000" as factors in determining current fair market value for Brookhaven Gardens homes. Hicks said it was clear to his appraisal team that Brookhaven Gardens is an island of increasing values in an ocean of depressed home values.
"I don't think it is an area that is experiencing some of the ills of other areas of the county," Hicks said, and its desirability is pushing values and prices up.
But Andy Peters, the real estate agent, said in his examination of house sales in the area, he has not found any homes that sold for anywhere near $550,000, and "nothing suggesting anywhere close to $500,000" that Hicks believes many of the Brookhaven Gardens homes are now worth.
"To say that property values have increased at all in the last three to four years is kind of laughable," Peters said.
"There hasn't been a $550,000 sale in the Brookhaven Gardens neighborhood in the last year," said Karen Smythe, a real estate broker. "So I'm not sure where he's getting his numbers from. We're fine with [values] catching up, but they need to be catching up in a justifiable manner. What we're seeing here is the county appraisals are well above where fair market is."
Stephanie Miller is organizing homeowners to fight the appraisals, setting up a blog as a central source of information for homeowners.
She said when she initially called Hicks' office, she was told that values had increased in her area, but, "they indicated a five percent increase. That is not what my tax appraisal shows. It shows a 26 percent increase."
Her home's appraisal went from $402,700 in 2011 to $508,100 in 2012, and she's certain it's the result of the same mistakes the county made in other neighborhoods this year, "and the county has acknowledged that the mistakes have been made [in those neighborhoods]. But they're not looking at our area. And so the only fair thing to do is to come back and re-evaluate the Brookhaven area."
Hicks explained Miller's increase by again pointing to the state-imposed freeze on appraisals that he said had kept Miller's home from going up in assessed value until this year.
"We were not allowed to show any appreciation between 2008 through 2011" on Miller's home, Hicks said. The 26 percent increase this year "is really an appreciation that's occurred over that four-year period, and it didn't necessarily occur over the time span of one year."
In fact, Hicks said, Miller bought her house in March 2006, for $475,000, so this year's appraisal of $508,100 is about 7 percent higher than the 2006 sale price, not 26 percent higher than the 2011 appraisal of $402,700.
"We had never placed the value as high as it actually sold for" in 2006, Hicks said, concluding that during the past four years, Miller "was paying [taxes] on something that was about $74,000 below what she paid for it."
But Miller said her house's value, like the values of other homes in the dire real estate market, steadily and rapidly decreased. Last year, she said, when she and her husband put it on the market, they couldn't get $425,000 for it, and they don't believe they could get $508,100 for it, now.
"The most cost-effective and efficient way to resolve this problem is to re-calculate, instead of processing hundreds and hundreds of appeals, which we all intend to file." Miller said.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

11Alive Covers Brookhaven Tax Appraisals

Our community effort gained media attention today! Jon Shirek from 11Alive visited the Brookhaven area. The story is scheduled to air this evening at 11pm. A huge thank you to Jon for covering the story and to our neighbors who showed up to discuss their outrageous property tax appraisals.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012


SURPRISED BY YOUR PROPERTY TAX INCREASE?

From our initial review of the DeKalb County records, it appears many homeowners in our neighborhood and the surrounding area experienced an increase in 2012 as high as 50% in the assessed value of our houses and property. Property taxes should be based on actual fair market value.

The right to appeal this assessment ends July 13, 2012. Each homeowner needs to file a separate appeal, but unfortunately these appeals can take over a year to resolve and each of us will still be required to pay taxes on 85% of the assessed home value during the appeal process, this is too long for such an obvious mistake in home assessments. Our neighbors in the Northlake area were successful in compiling information and lobbying the local tax assessors office for mass reappraisals, something that needs to be done for our our community as well.

What to do:

  • A group of like-minded neighbors are trying to organize a meeting. A few tax attorneys who live in our area plan to attend, and will be happy to answer questions about the appeals process. We will post information about the meeting and share all of our findings with you on this blog:
  • Call the County. Stress that the most efficient and cost-effective way for the County to resolve this matter is to re-assess the Brookhaven area instead of having to process appeals for the hundreds and hundreds of homes which are still dramatically over-valued for tax purposes. Advise them that we all intend to file appeals if the County won’t take immediate steps to correct its mistakes.
    • Deputy Chief Assessor, Donna Rosser: 404-371-2522
    • County Commissioner, Jeff Rader: 404-371-2863
  • Please post any questions or useful information you hear; share your experiences contacting the commissioners and tax assessors office on the blog above. You can also email or call me with the information and I will post it. As a group, we can work together to compile supporting documentation to show a more accurate & reasonable valuation for each of our properties.
  • As fellow homeowners, we plan to speak with the Assessor’s Office and review the county’s records used to determine the new assessed values (if any exist), and compile information critical to our efforts. We will share any useful information we acquire.
  • File your property tax appeal by the deadline, if the county refuses to reassess your property.

Several individuals from our neighborhood have helped with this initiative. Thank you to everyone for working together to make sure no one is paying more than their fair share.