Lesley Wright
The Arizona Republic
SCOTTSDALE - Northeast Valley homeowners began grappling with the downside of jumping home values this week when they received the latest assessments from the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office.
Increased values might seem to foretell a higher tax bill in the fall, but cities and school districts regularly lower tax rates to account for any windfall.
The good news - tax-wise anyway - is that values have not gone up nearly as much as they did last year.
The bad news is that property tax bills lag a year behind, so the bill you receive in the fall will be for your 2007 valuation. That assessment still reflected the real estate boom of 2005 and 2006.
Assessor Keith Russell sent notices to the 1.4 million people, businesses and agencies that own land in the county. Last year’s assessment found that the median home value jumped 51.7 percent from the previous year. But this year’s median home value rose only by 10.9 percent.
This year, the median cash value of Paradise Valley houses shot up nearly 25 percent in the 2008 home valuations.
Scottsdale posted a more reasonable median, an increase of 11.4 percent, with Cave Creek and Carefree homeowners in the 7 to 9 percent range. The median value of a Fountain Hills home increased just under 5 percent.
The median means that half the homes fell below the mark and half posted above it. The average increase may be much higher. And your individual home might not reflect the median.
“It could be quite a bit higher or quite a bit lower, depending where you are,” Russell said.
The assessors look at actual sales for homes in your neighborhood and then use a computer model that accounts for differences in square footage, age, garages and other factors.
The full cash value is meant to be slightly below market value.
Russell said that he has a staff of 350 trying to determine the value for 1.4 million property owners. The office spends the year hearing appeals.
“If homes are overvalued, I want to know,” Russell said. “The people need to ask themselves, ‘Can I sell my house for this amount or not?’ ”
If not, then homeowners can file an appeal using a form provided on the back of the assessment. The forms also can be found online, by phone or by mail.
Homeowners must file the appeal by April 10 or lose some of their rights.
“Anybody can appeal and there is no cost,” Russell added.
If your valuation appears to have jumped much higher than the median, the house could be overassessed. Or, the office underassessed the property last year and is just now catching up, he added.
