News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County’s new property reappraisals values set to go out Friday.
County Property Assessor Steve Pierce said Putnam County does its reappraisals every five years. Pierce said that this state mandated process is necessary because of the market value changes that can occur between appraisals.
“It’s something we go through to bring market values back up to what the current market is now in your area,” Pierce said. “It’s based on sales in the last two years and we change values based on base rates of homes, per acre rates based on sales for the past two years.”
Pierce said the first step in the process is an analysis of those sale rates over the last two years. However, Pierce said reappraisals are something his office is constantly working on.
“We’re working on reappraisals every year, everyday, actually in this office we have to do some things at all times that are leading up to reappraisal,” Pierce said. “Four years previous to this we review all the parcels. It takes us four years to get around the county and review them, look for errors, look for additions, anything that’s been taken away, anything that’s been removed on piece of property. So we review about a little over 10,000 parcels each year, getting to this point. Them in the fifth year we start to work on this process of revaluing all the properties.”
Pierce said with reappraisals going out on April 23, it is nearly a month before the state’s May 20 deadline. He said this allows for more time to prepare before appeals can be made to the County Board of Equalization that meets during the month of June.
“We wanted to do them early this year, so it gives us a time period of informal hearings as we call it, to look at at properties,” Pierce said. “We have to do this in a mass appraisal in a large scale, you know 42,000 parcels. We have to treat some of them all the same and we know they’re not all the same, so it does create some issues there and some things we have to go back and look at and reanalyze some stuff.”
Pierce said that property reappraisals do not play into the county’s taxes or budget. Pierce said there is a “seesaw” dynamic between property values and the way the state sets the certified tax rate.
“When the appraisal values go up, the certified rate goes down,” Pierce said. “The state board will calculate that. I usually work with them closely, I check those and I will give those out to each city within the county and our county commission of a new certified rate. That represents you and I and all the taxpayers, pay the same amount of taxes. We don’t have the authority to set the tax rate.”
Pierce said the certified tax rate comes in during the first week of July. Pierce said the current reality is that the real estate market is up, construction costs and lumber are up and there is a high-demand for homes during a time when there is low inventory.
“Housing and any structure is increased from last time, all though that does not mean that you’ll pay more taxes,” Pierce said. “That only means that your appraisal has gone up. We don’t control the tax rate, we do work with the certified rate. We just want to be transparent and open with them, if something doesn’t look right or they have questions we want them to call here.”
Pierce said that the property assessor’s office will handle each dispute on a case by case basis and residents can make appeals to the county board of equalization during June.
