TREBIC's Marlene Sanford: "Guilford County 2012 Property Tax Revaluation"

"At our Annual Meeting in January TREBIC heard from an expert panel
on Guilford County Property Tax Revaluation:

What to Expect, What to Do.

Here’s what we learned:

Under NC Statute counties must revalue real property at least every 8 years,
and 2012 is Guilford County’s year.

The Tax Department’s 13 certified Real Property Appraisers
have assessed its 164,000 Residential Parcels and 44,000 non-residential parcels
and plans to mail notices of the new assessed values in early March.

IN an effort to do as accurate as job as possible,
they have used an array of state-of-the-art technological tools
and performed detailed analysis of 2500 neighborhoods (v. the usual 300).

...By law, properties must be assessed at Market Value,
meaning the most likely price that the property would sell
for recognizing current use as well as its potential use,
with a willing buyer and a willing seller,
both fully informed and neither under any pressure to buy or sell.

While assessed value typically starts at 100% of market value in a revaluation year,
it generally drops over the course of the next 8 years as market values rise.

For instance, assessed value of Guilford County properties
was only 80% of market value right before the last revaluation.

But because of the current recession,
2011 assessed values were actually 3.7% higher on average than market value.

...the Tax Director predicts only minimal sticker shock for owners,
with no extreme value fluctuations.

But it is possible that overall,
assessed value may be down from the 2004 assessed value,
so the Revenue Neutral Property Tax Rate may increase."

Marlene Sanford
President

"Panelists were Guilford County Tax Assessor Ben Chavis; Debbie Winters - TREBIC member, Partner in Colvin Sutton Winters & Associates Appraisers and Newly Appointed Member of Guilford County Board of Equalization & Review; Brian Pearce - a TREBIC member and attorney with Nexsen Pruet who has litigated tax assessment matters; and Jeff Deal - a Past-Member of Guilford County Board of Equalization & Review."