Loudoun Assessor Speaks About 2009 Assessment Appeal Process
January 23, 2009 by Danilo Bogdanovic
Filed under Taxes
The Loudoun County Assessor, Todd Kaufman, spoke about the 2009 assessment appeal process today at the Dulles Association of Realtors office in Leesburg, VA. The packed "Lunch and Learn" event was catered by Charles Fincher of Monarch Title (thank you Charles).
Here are some of the highlights I took from the presentation:
- Bank-owned properties and short-sales are "not considered" when coming up with assessed values yet, they "are sometimes" – ?!
- The appeal process is meant to "not be adversarial"
- The Loudoun Assessor's Office "welcomes more information about properties in order to get the assessed values correct"
- The Assessor's Office only has 18 appraisers that have to assess all 115,000 properties in Loudoun
- The assessor uses public data to determine assessed values (automated process)
- The goal of the Loudoun Assessor's office is to physically review 25 percent of all properties in Loudoun, but that does not mean going into the property – only seeing it from the outside.
- If you win your appeal with the Board of Equalization (BOE) and your assessment goes down, Loudoun County may take you, the property owner, to court to fight the BOE's ruling. The BOE is out of the loop, but the property owner is now on the hook and takes the heat for the BOE's ruling
- Loudoun Assessor says that his office never has nor ever will refuse to look inside of a property if asked to do so. Only home owners have refused to let Assessor's Office in
- The online Application for Review Form has come a long way – it's much more user friendly and auto-populates once you enter your property PIN into the form
And here are the five steps to appealing your Loudoun assessment…
- Review notice of assessment via snail mail or online. The notice will include schedule/steps regarding appeal process
- Submit an Application for Review Form postmarked no later than March 6 (you can also complete it online). Important: If you choose to appeal the assessed value based on market value, you must have the details of three comparable properties and an opinion of true market value ready to submit along with the Application for Review Form (contact me if you need a list of comparable properties and/or a determination of market value for your property)
- Written request for consideration on current assessment or previous assessments (up to 3 years) based on an erroneous error
- Formal appeal to Board of Equalization (BOE). Postmark deadline for appeal consideration by BOE is June 1
- Formal petition of appeal through Court system
Further Details
The Review Process
- Goal is to provide convenient and uniform review process allowing informal discussions regarding assessments
- Petitioners must address concerns regarding property value and provide empirical evidence why assessment may be incorrect. Burden of proof legally on property owner. Assessment deemed correct unless petitioner illustrates otherwise
- Appeals documented become part of assessement record (aka what you tell the assessor's office becomes public data). Automated Application for Review Form provides non-adversarial platform for public to communicate assessment concerns
- Property owners encouraged to discuss concerns with staff prior to filing formal appeal through BOE or courts
Reconsideration of a Prior Assessment
- Property owner requests correction to property record which may impact assessment for current and prior years
- Example: garage demolished or added several years earlier. May not have been recorded because property owner did apply for permit. Property owner can seek relief from Assessor to correct current assessment and up to three years prior assessments.
- Relief granted if sufficient evidence formally provided in writing substantiating need for change in the assessment
Board of Equalization
- Opportunity to appeal to a local, independent group that may adjust value (current year only)
- BOE has 5 member, court appointed citizens panel. Consider equity and market value. BOE prohibited from making erroneous changes without support or evidence
- Petitioner must provide evidence establishing that assessment is incorrect based on comparable sales or by establishing inequity. Application for appeal must be in writing
- Properties can be adjusted by BOE if error disclosed, even if property owner did not appeal assessment
Court
- Last element in appeal process
- Adversarial process which typically requires petitioner to hire an independent fee appraiser and legal counsel
- Formal appeals such as these are expensive and time consuming for both the property owner and the County
Dave on Sun, 25th Jan 2009 10:40 pm
How does this new assessment, affect sale price of the houses in the market. As a buyer, should I look these assessment value?
Danilo Bogdanovic on Sun, 25th Jan 2009 11:58 pm
Dave – That’s a great question and one asked often.
The answer is “no” – assessed values should not be used as the “end-all-be-all” determination of a property’s market value. The assessed value of a property can be used as one data-point to get a very general idea of what the value may be or how much it’s changed since last year, but that’s about it.
The reason why is because the process by which the assessor’s office comes up with assessed values is automated. It’s basically a computer program that uses public data such as tax records and that data can often be flawed, incomplete and/or inaccurate.
And, as the Loudoun Assessor mentioned during his presentation, the county’s appraisers only drive by no more than 25 percent of all properties in Loudoun and they don’t go inside any of them unless asked to by the homeowner (usually for assessment appeal purposes). This leaves a lot of room for error.
And assessed values shouldn’t affect sales/market values because it’s market values that affect assessed values.
I’ll be doing a post on this topic in the bear future which will go into further detail, but this gives you a general idea of why the answer is “no”. If I didn’t answer your question in enough detail or if you have questions, feel free to contact me.
Dave on Mon, 26th Jan 2009 11:17 am
Thanks for your reply. There were times(2005 and 2006) when sale prices are higher than assessed values and all last year sale prices are lower than assessed values for most properties. If your sale prices is more than assessed value isn’t it difficult for appraiser to justify the sale price? Are the lenders seek reasons for higher appraisal than assessed value? Any way, Thanks a lot for maintaining this blog…truck load of helpful information is here. Keep it up good work.
Danilo Bogdanovic on Mon, 26th Jan 2009 5:07 pm
Dave – Welcome! Thank you for reading the blog and for your great questions and comments. If you have any feedback or suggestions on what I could do to improve it, please let me know.
To answer your question… How the assessed value compares to the sales price doesn’t matter to the bank or the bank’s appraiser because,
1) assessed values are what the county assessor thinks the property is valued at on (and only on) January 1 of that year. That means that the value may differ the other 364 days of the year and,
2) the appraiser knows that assessed values are not very accurate because the county assessor’s office doesn’t look at the inside of the home (which a bank’s appraiser always does).
In a nutshell, banks don’t look at assessed values – in fact, they don’t really care about them nor trust them. If they did, they wouldn’t hire their own appraiser to determine the current market value of the property.