This is the first decline since the City began keeping detailed records in 1976.
The DP has some details:
“It’s pretty much all dictated by sales,” said [City Assessor Roosevelt] Barbour, adding that the city saw 21 percent fewer sales in 2009 than the year before. “We just interpret the market. We don’t make the market.”
The city government has been keeping track of assessment growth since 1976. Values peaked in 2006, when there was a 15.34 percent average increase among existing residential and commercial properties.
Bernard Wray, Charlottesville’s finance director, said that based on the most recent figures, the city would garner roughly $175,000 less in real-estate taxes than budgeted if the tax rate remains steady. The city had assumed, for budget planning purposes, that overall real-estate assessments would remain flat.
Some numbers via The DP:
- Of Charlottesville’s 43 neighborhoods
- 21 saw their residential assessments decline
- 18 remained flat
- Largest decrease was in Orangedale, which saw values decline by -26 percent.
- Ix/Belmont: -13.8 percent decrease
- Carlton/Belmont -11.9 percent decrease
- Four neighborhoods saw small growth: Greenbrier, Rose Hill, Johnson Village and Little High Street/East Jefferson Street, "despite the suffering residential real-estate market."
- No commercial properties saw growth in values.
Albemarle County Assessments declined on average nearly 4%: click here.
Image copyright/courtesy tzpictures at flickr.
