📈Property value & tax increases explained
In the wake of last week’s heat wave, most likely attributed to the steam pouring out of Montgomery county residents’ ears after receiving their recent correspondence from our county auditor friend, Karl Keith, I wanted to connect with all of my fellow Montgomery county residents and hopefully provide some insight and some context for what’s going on with our property valuations. For those of you outside of Montgomery county, your turn will come in the next couple years as the surrounding counties also go through their valuation updates.
Every six years the county is required to do a full re-assessment of all properties within the county in order to update their values to better reflect how the market has changed since the last re-assessment. At the mid point of each six year cycle, the county also does what’s called a triennial, or mini re-assessment, in order to keep the market and county values from getting too out of alignment during the six year span. Either that, or because Karl just likes having pen pals (just kidding, all counties do triennials).
Presumably, everyone’s aware that real estate has been on fire for the last 3 years, so it probably won’t be too terribly shocking to hear that the state of Ohio has recommended a 37% increase to property values in this current update, which the county uses as a guidepost for their updates. The next, logical (or possibly, horrifying) conclusion most of us will come to is that a 37% increase in property values will also yield a 37% increase in property taxes. Luckily though, this isn’t the case.
Probably anticipating the deluge of strongly worded letters they were likely to receive, the Montgomery county auditor’s office has done a pretty good job of making information and FAQ’s accessible on their website in order to discourage angry mobs from forming educate and inform their residents about the process and what effects they will likely feel. One of those such resources is a page on their website that explains the relationship between tax valuation and property taxes (FOUND HERE). If nothing else, that web page should help ease your fears that you won’t see percentage for percentage increases to each number. To be fair, your taxes will go up, but not quite as cripplingly as the initial shock might lead you to believe.
With all of that said, you do still have the option to challenge your appraisal value. If you’re interested in filing an appeal with the Board of Revision (link HERE), we’re glad to help provide whatever info we can, including comparable sales in your area that might help support your case. You can also schedule an informal review (link HERE) where you can schedule a Zoom call with a county appraiser. I have to say though, I haven’t had anyone go through one of these informal reviews yet, so I’m not exactly sure how thorough they are, or how helpful they will be. Remember too, when you ask for a review the resulting changes aren’t only one direction. Your value can actually INCREASE during review, so make sure that you know your stuff before you finalize the decision to file a review.
On the other hand, if fighting that battle with the county doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, feel free to just call us and we can probably find an alternate solution to staying pen pals with ol’ Karl. I hear all of the counties surrounding Montgomery are lovely this time of year.
