Watauga will postpone property reevaluation

By Scott Nicholson

With home sales cooling nationwide, Watauga County has not been immune from the trend, with the Watauga County Board of Commissioners deciding Tuesday to postpone a scheduled property revaluation.

The county revaluation for property taxes was scheduled for next year, but county tax administrator Kelvin Byrd warned that there had been few property sales and therefore a schedule of values would be difficult to create. Revaluations are required at least every eight years, though counties can choose to perform them more frequently.

The values are used in determining overall tax value for the county and for determining the property-tax rate for the county budget. While the tax value can differ from an appraised value for real estate transactions, the revaluation depends upon close comparison of recent sales with similar properties in the area.

Watauga County moved to a four-year cycle in 2002, and Byrd said current sales are close to what they are currently listed at from the 2006 revaluation, suggesting little growth in property values. With little appreciation in home values, there’s less chance of ‘sticker shock” when values change dramatically.

Deal said the number of sales to date this year are a third of what they were in 2007, and said the rapid appreciation of several years ago had stalled. He also said the county would need to make a decision on the revaluation before investing money in the process.

Byrd said recent sales levels seem to be close to 2005 values, and said generally values may have dropped for properties purchased in 2008. He said that seemed to hold true in all areas of the county.

Commissioner Billy Ralph Winkler said he had been reluctant to postpone the revaluation but said the county would spend a lot of money to get values that were similar to what was already on the books.

Commissioner Tim Futrelle said a revaluation would be fair to taxpayers but waiting could be the best course.
Byrd said it would be hard to defend newly assigned values because of the lack of the sales and data. Deal said though there had been 900 property sales since 2006, they were scattered across the county and would be difficult to assign comparative values in any one area.

Nelson said postponing the revaluation would save $108,000 this year. The commissioners by consensus agreed to defer the revaluation and decide in June how many years to extend the deferral.