Beaufort County Commissioner Stan Deatherage started a discussion at Monday's board meeting that may end in providing some relief for county property-tax payers, whose property tax bills will go up this year due to increases in county-assessed property values.
It is Deatherage's aspiration to advance the date for the next property revaluation, scheduled for 2018, in light of his speculation that the revaluation ending Mar. 25 of this year resulted in less than equitable assessed values.
"I had spoken with many of my constituents over the last year since they received their revaluation notices, and the most uniform complaint amongst them all is the apparent unfair values placed on some properties, as opposed to others," said Deatherage in a telephone interview on Thursday.
Beaufort County Commissioner Stan Deatherage explains his plans to Commissioner Jerry Langley at Monday's board meeting.
Beaufort County property owners were given the opportunity to dispute the assessed values of their properties, by asking for an informal review by a real-estate appraiser; or, stating their case before the Board of Equalization and Review, comprised of by the Beaufort County commissioners.
"After being involved with the equalization and review process that stretched out over nearly three months of this late spring and summer, and doing other research, I had determined that the properties evaluated with the most comparables available had the fairest values place on them," said Deatherage, in the telephone interview.
During this last revaluation, the perilous real estate market had not produced sufficient sales for many of the 44,360 Beaufort County properties, and appraisers had to rely on controversial methods, such as the cost approach, to arrive at values in some areas.
The cost approach to valuation is the most optimistic of appraisal methods, typically resulting in more elevated prices. The cost approach figures the depreciated reproduction or replacement cost of improvements, plus the market value of the site. The cost approach gives the best indication of market value when the property in question is new and at its highest and best use. Obviously, this ideal wasn't always, or even normally, the case in Beaufort County, which has a large share of older homes.
Even a five-month extension, granted to Beaufort County by the N.C. Dept. of Revenue, was not enough to procure a better appraisal environment.
"What I'm going to suggest to this board of commissioners, so that we may try to effect a more fair property valuation of properties in Beaufort County, that we consider a property revaluation on a four-, five- or six-year period, maybe just this one time, for a variety of reasons," said Deatherage, at the meeting.
As per the Machinery Act, a general statute enforced by the state of North Carolina, the burden is on the county to assess county properties at least every eight years. Beaufort County has not, in the recent past, performed an early revaluation, according to Beaufort County Tax Assessor Bobby Parker in a telephone interview on Thursday. Deatherage had a similar memory.
"Since I've been a commissioner, we've always gone on the eight-year plan," said Deatherage at Monday's meeting. "We've wanted to extend it as long as possible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the cost to the taxpayers of Beaufort County."
Beaufort County spent about $1,036,000 on the 2010 revaluation, according to Parker.
With this price tag in mind, Deatherage, a real-estate broker since 1987, said he will be doing extensive market research before he asks the Beaufort County board to take any action on altering the property revaluation timeframe.
"I don't even want to head towards a revaluation until we know that we've got a better comparable base," he said at the meeting.
According to Parker, the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners' request to advance the date would have to ultimately be approved by the N.C. Dept. of Revenue. He recalled that, this year, about three or four N.C. counties made such requests and were denied. In order to be granted such a request, Beaufort County would have to provide compelling evidence of its necessity, he said.
"A lot of data would have to be looked at before anything could be done," said Parker. "I think it needs to be worthwhile. You don't want to go out here and start doing a revaluation unless it's going to make some major changes."
Currently, Parker said, Beaufort County property values are at 99 percent of fair market value. The N.C. Dept. of Revenue would be more likely to consider advancing Beaufort County's revaluation date if property values substantially exceeded 100 percent of fair value, he said.
The Beaufort County Tax Assessors Office arrives at this sales ratio on a quarterly basis, by providing sales data and tax-value data for a random sample of properties chosen by the N.C. Dept. of Revenue's Property Tax Commission.
If the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners decides to request an advance, Parker said it would take at least two years to get permission from the state, find a contractor, have the contract approved, and so on.
