Real Estate Assessments for 2006

Hey,

Just checked the loudoun County website and it looks like property assessments will be mailed around Feb 15. Curious what the increases will be this year. It looks like many of the assessed values increased about 25%. 2004 my house was valued at 418K. 2005 - 518K.

I think I'm getting a little nervous with the thought of paying extra taxes this year.

Mike

 

Get used to it. My taxes have doubled in 5 years in my current house.

 

Hey, someone has to pay for these $70 million high schools that are only half full.

 

Oh, also get used to the fact Supervisors don't call the increase in tax due to larger assessments a tax increase. Staton's trick last year.

 

Watch out, AFGM, you sound just like Mr. DelGaudio. Not a good thing to do, according to Blackout!

The three Board members who tend to vote together on the tax rate are Waters, Staton and DelGaudio. All three always reference the increased assessments raising taxes, which must be adjusted through the rate.

DelGaudio is the strictest, with a yearly campaign to equalize the rate. Last year was the first time in Loudoun history that he voted FOR the budget.

Barbara Munsey, from South Riding.

 

p.s.to Ducthml: the two built at the same time each came in under budget from being bid together. The $15M that the staff "found" for the BoS last year? That was the surplus from the savings on Briar Woods and Freedom, which the school board turned back to the board of supervisors. Those two will be the cheapest high schools Loudoun builds for a long time.

Barbara Munsey, from South Riding.

 

Check those schools in about 2 or 3 years ...

Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

Cliff,

I see my tax increasing every year, However, I will never get used to it. I'm just happy that the county assessments are not equal to the current market value. Or maybe it will be this year.

Anyone want to take a shot at what the assessed value increase will be for this year?

My Guess : 15%

Mike

 

No kidding. I can't believe someone would complain that the county is actually trying to get ahead of school construction. These are probably the same people that would complain that their kids are forced to have their classes in trailers...

 

Briar Woods and Freedom were bonded at $52 and $53M, bids came in less, and construction came in less than that. Shortly thereafter is when concrete etc began to be scarce.

About the same time is when we began to see site acquisition on every year's ballot. The reason? Back up and look at how many applications offering school sites were denied (and went to court) during the 99-03 BoS unofficial moratorium on planned growth. Then look up how much land developed out in by-right with nothing but houses. The bill on that unplanned by-right is coming due in terms of the land it wasted.

Tom Reed spoke passionately before the last BoS on what their Comp Plan would do to the cost of schools, which we would be needing anyway with the number of people moving here with not-yet school-age kids, and still being in their childbearing years. This is a family county. They are already on record last year at school admin saying that even if another family never moves in again (but by-right always remains an option), we would still need to construct schools because of the children already here and moving through the system, and their younger siblings coming along behind them.

Barbara Munsey, from South Riding.

 

Koyak-
Consider yourself fortunate. My house has been consistently assessed ABOVE market value.
I appealed my assessment, spent hours on researching the homes they used to compute my value, demonstrated via charts and graphs (I sound like Ross Perot here) how my home was incorrectly assessed.
The result? Nothing.
The next step is to appeal through the courts, which I decided wasn't worth the effort.

The reason I was unhappy is that they were using houses that were on the average 4500- 1000 square feet larger than mine and using those as the comps, rather than homes the same size as mine.

 

Cliff,

Sorry about your assessment situation. I always thought the county assessed below market value. But I can see that in some situations, that is not the case.

mike

 

No different than any other counties in NOVA .. I know since I used to live in Fairfax County and it was the same thing ...

 

Hey, I had classes in trailers in Ffx. Cty. in the early 70's and look how I turned out...wait, on second thought...

 

the problem with the assessments rising at this rate is that some folks can't afford their homes anymore. I know that my mortgage payment went up $200/month last year just to cover the increase in taxes. If you stretched to get in a house, $200/month is an unwelcome surprise. I'm not even going to go into whether or not folks should believe what the realtors (who make more on more expensive houses, DUH!) tell them they can afford. But these tax increases are ridiculous.

 

Zansu you are hitting it in a nut shell. Growth and fast appreciation caused in a big part by specuators really hurt everyone. More sprawl just bigger and bigger tax bills until the area slows down and even declines. Also higher energy prices people could be starting to be priced out of their homes. Who says there is not much inflation??? We really need these large urban centers to help pay the costs in this county and get these roads built around here. Western Loudoun needs to be left alone until eastern part is under control.

Think about it why would there be any revenue from from western part if all they are going to create is the same mess and the tax base out there won't support their owns needs in roads and schools and other services. Don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

Lee J Buividas

 

According to loudoun county's website, it says the average increase for 2006 will be 28%! Pretty soon, NJ taxes will look affordable.

 

[:0]

 

What would be nice is if they did what they did last year. Decrease the tax rate so your overall taxes don't change with new assessments. Unless I'm mistaken, we used to get taxed at $1.11 but they cut it to $1.07 this past year.

 

The vast majority of the higher taxes are required to pay for the costs of more children in the school system, both capital costs for new schools and the on-going operating expense of staffing them. The additional taxes raised from new homes don't cover the increased costs, so taxes rise for everyone.

IMHO, new home permits should be assessed a fee to fully cover the costs of the construction and operation of new schools, roads, and other infrastructure required. The period of time the fee should be calculated to cover is until commercial development catches up and provides the incremental tax dollars in order to hold the existing county tax payers even.

Some will claim that this will drive development away to other cheaper areas and we will be left out of the economic benefits. However, the current model seems to be setting us up in the perfect position in a race to the highest taxes.

Give it some thought and go vote on Tuesday.

-Jim