Board of Equalization Meeting   7/28/2020

All right, do we call the meeting to order?

Yeah.

Meeting called to order at 9 o'clock.

We have a quorum.

Mr. Van Roijen, Mr. Lynch, Julie Taylor, Mr. Shelley, Mr. Farrell, Karen Pape, Mr. Cromwell, Mr. Arsali are all present.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A, parentheses 6.

The public has the opportunity to access and participate in the electronic meeting through phone, computer, or tablet, and directions on how to connect are located on the Albemarle County website.

So I know our applicant's not here.

Can we talk about the minutes?

Any changes?

Aye.

All right.

I believe Billy, she's muted.

I think she's on the phone calling Mr. Clark right now.

Very good.

Great.

10 days old today.

Very good.

Sleeping well, for a baby sleeping well.

Waking up still a few, obviously waking up a few times a night, but not too bad at all.

Can't complain.

You're an old hand at this now.

That's right.

OK. Mr. Clark, you are muted.

Unmute.

There we go.

Okay, I can hear you now.

Good morning, Mr. Clark.

This is your friendly Board of Equalization.

The members here are members of the different districts in the county.

Myself, Mr. Ferrell, Karen Pape, Mr. Cromwell, and Mr. Arsali.

We're here to hear what you have to say about your tax assessment.

We'll listen to you first.

Then we'll listen to Mr. Lynch's explanation as to how he came up with your appraisal.

And then we will discuss it.

And within two weeks, you will receive notification in the mail as to our determination.

Nope, not at this time.

Let me just start by saying my father served on the Board of Equalization for several years for the Scottsville District and I worked for the County of Albemarle for 12 years from 1991 to 2003.

I worked in the finance department there.

So I'm a little bit familiar with assessments and so forth.

I'm currently living, this is my parents' house that I'm living in.

And just when we inherited it, it needed a lot of work.

Unfortunately, to this date, money hasn't been there to do the repairs needed.

So the condition of the home is one of the items that

That's concerning me.

I had an assessor come out in 2017 and rated the house in poor condition and the assessment at the time was 250,000.

and then for the following years it's gone to 281 in 18, 314 in 2019, 319 in 2020.

The actual house has gone up 127, 146, 151.

respectively.

It was rated in poor condition and no improvements have been done, so I continue to believe that it is a poor condition.

There's foundation that's cracked and leaks, it needs a new roof, it needs new windows, pretty expensive improvements to the house.

And then if somebody wanted to come in, they would have to really redo the kitchen, redo the bath, things like that.

But that's not as major as the other issues are.

So the condition is, I think, is poor.

The storm just left us with roof damage and a lot of trees down the storm we had last week.

That's as far as the house is concerned.

And then the land itself, yes, the neighborhood has had sales that's continued to go up.

Several years ago, there was one that sold as is for 219, about two houses down from me, as is, but it was much better condition than this.

And that sold for 219.

I know location is everything usually on land.

However, this particular lot is next door to the county police and fire station right across the street.

Although I do totally support the police and the fire department, you know, we have to listen to sirens all the time going off throughout the night and day.

and that's really part of the special use permit.

They were not supposed to use sirens until they get out to Fifth Street, but I guess that's hard to enforce for that many different people.

Also this past year, they constructed a communications tower that's over a hundred feet tall and right in my view shed where I'm sitting right now.

I think that takes away from the property as well.

But yeah, I don't think that this piece of property

shares the same privacy that the other lots do on this street.

So I think that takes away from it a bit, unless it had a commercial use, which it doesn't, but that pretty much sums it up as far as both the house and the land, my reasons for disputing the assessment.

and not just based on sales, because I know most of the time we just look at equivalent sales, but I don't think we're looking at equivalent house or equivalent lot in that case.

Mr. Clark, could you in a way break down your dispute of the land and then the house a little bit in terms of numbers?

Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying.

But I'm in an as is condition on the real estate market with the amount of money that would have to be put into this house.

I do not think that it would sell for anything over $250,000 because of the amount of you're talking about $150,000 you'd have to put into this place to get it

Livable again and I'm sure like redoing the basement that has to be dug up all around it waterproof things like that it's not they're not inexpensive things a couple of roofs and Windows things like that, you know, it's a lot of money for someone to come in pay three hundred and thirty thousand for the house and then put in a hundred and twenty five hundred and fifty thousand dollars into it

So I guess I'm gonna go back to my question.

Yeah, I think, you know,

Okay, what we're trying to do, or at least I'm trying to do, is figure out where the parts of the dispute are, and you're about $16,000 off on the land from what the assessor says, and on the building, you're about $27,000 off.

You say it's worth $100,000, he says it's worth $127,200.

And so that's what I'm trying to look at.

We're missing here also the two outbuildings.

The county gives almost $24,000 to the outbuildings.

Are you saying that all the buildings combined are worth $100,000?

Yes.

$2,500, almost $2,500 finished square foot home, a shed, and a garage.

Yeah, because the outbuildings need new roofs as well, and both of them are leaking inside.

Okay.

Mr. Lynch?

All right, thank you.

So yes, we did do an inspection back in 2017 and put the property into poor condition, which it was.

And we have kept that poor condition and actually in addition

to changing it to poor condition which adds additional depreciation to the house value calculation.

We put an additional 15% functional on top of that which is for the structural issues that the house has kind of on top of just poor condition additional

reduction in value for those issues.

Plus there's a slight layout problem with the flow of the house.

So that's all built into the functional 15% that we use.

And we still, we've carried that poor condition and the 15% forward since 2017.

So that has not changed.

in the three years since then.

What has changed is the neighborhood around it has gone up quite a bit with the Fifth Street Station coming online.

All of those neighborhoods in the county just south of the interstate have gone up quite a bit.

We've talked about some of those neighborhoods in the past few years.

So what's happened is the base that the values is calculated on has gone up and then we still take off that 15% plus the additional depreciation for condition.

So we're not denying at all that it's in poor condition.

We definitely believe and value it based on being in poor condition and having additional issues.

So just to tell you what, this house, if it were in average condition, if we were not taking, if we didn't put it in poor and we didn't have the 15% extra, we would be assessing it right now for 426.9.

That is the 168.8 and there's no reason why this land would be any less than that value because of the condition of improvements.

but the- So Mr. Lynch, the 426 would be comparable with the neighborhood sales?

Exactly.

I'm looking at these recent sales and I don't see any of them that high.

Let's see.

I don't think you... You don't do it that way.

You don't work off an average base, do you, and then discount?

The way the model works is it's valuing the average house.

When we put a house in average condition, the rates that are used and the depreciation that are used are based on that.

Yes, except it had basement leaking problems.

They had to redo the foundation, but other than that, it was turnkey.

There is a $400,000 sale that's 1,000 square feet in the neighborhood.

I mean, yes, that 426, if this was actually in average condition, the 426 would fall above the range of these sale prices, but it is 1,800 square feet of living area plus 682 square feet in finished basement.

and just because it falls above these, it's not way out of whack.

But would it be the best house in the neighborhood if it was in great shape?

Now this is just a sample of sales.

It doesn't mean that it would be the best house in the neighborhood.

I don't have the range of assessments for the neighborhood.

Billy Taylor, if you could, there you are, if you could run a quick report of the neighborhood

In the meantime, Mr. Lynch, did you give any discount to the property itself with regard to its location?

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I was thinking of this as a rule.

We have two lines on here.

The initial half acre, which is kind of standard,

We have at the base $125,000.

And we do not adjust that for location on that corner or across from the police station, from that county office building.

Do you think you should?

I understand that, but given the location, given the traffic, given the noise, I don't find it particularly attractive, I'm sorry to say.

I'm thinking it might diminish its saleability.

Peter.

Yeah.

Well, you're in an area that's maybe a little bit in transition, but it's got an R2 zoning, and you've got sales around it.

It does seem a little high to me, but not a lot.

I would defer to the residential guys to give us some guidance on that.

What 2,500 square feet of finished space, one and three quarters acre, 319, I mean, you know, you're not even, I mean, valuing it at $50 a square foot, which I think roughly the county is doing.

I think you'd have people who want to buy this as is for 319

I don't think it needs $100,000 worth of work, windows, fixing the basement, new roof.

It's not going to cost $107,000, but that's going to get it up to average condition.

Yeah.

I'm just looking at the sales that were used.

And then if we look at the older properties, I would discount that one storey that's on Oak Hill Drive that was only

2,000 square feet, 325, but then you've got the Woodhaven State, well that's a little younger, but you've got this 58 year old property on Brookhill.

It's pretty comfortable.

An old Lynchburg road that sold at 345, it was 35 years old with 1,500 square feet.

You know, those properties seem to be within the range in terms of acre footage.

I'm not familiar with the sale that Mr. Clark mentioned that was two doors away.

He said it sold a couple of years ago.

The sale on Brookhill sold for $360 in 2018.

Do we have, or does the assessor have any comps with something, because everything I'm looking at is, as we're talking, I'm looking up each of these and looking at the pictures, they all seem to be in pretty good shape.

I mean, obviously, price per square footage wise, but like, the only one I see that actually had similar condition or somewhat similar conditions seems to be stagecoach, the first one, 603 stagecoach, which even that one seemed like the roof and stuff seemed to be fine.

but everything else like that Sunset Avenue that was a thousand square foot had another thousand almost 800 square foot multi-purpose building that looked it looks like it was a completely gut renovation on that one the one the two there in the neighborhood Pinehurst and Oak Hill are in really good shape one was fully renovated the other one was looked like it was in really good shape so are there any

comps in there that reflect the similar.

And obviously, we're not privy to pictures of, we're just kind of getting an argument as to what the condition is, when we make pictures of the property.

Yeah, just to say, is there anything that's, because I know there is that, obviously, there is a distinction between a finished home and a real cost is the finish that there's a headache.

So it just would be helpful to have something that's

I could speak on the sale at 603 Stagecoach Road, although not in the comments section.

That was a house that is close to an acre of land, maybe over an acre of land.

To get to it, you have to take an easement off Stagecoach

and that easement goes within maybe 10 feet of the front's on stagecoach and this one sits behind it.

So we have down an easement house within maybe 10 feet.

I took a picture of that house when it sold to get to that site.

The house itself was inferior quality.

It was vinyl sided with a basement.

A little bit smaller, I believe.

But it was in probably fair to average condition.

In fact, it was purchased by a builder.

And my guess is he was going to fix it and either have someone live in it and rent it or maybe try and flip it.

I don't know.

But that sold for $249.99 on an inferior lot with a lower quality house that did need some work.

I don't think it was similar condition to the subject.

MLS listing indicated it needed what they call TLC, tender loving care, which needed updating and needed to be worked on a little bit.

And that sold for $249 on an inferior lot, lower quality house, needing some work on the easement.

So it seems to me that that house

is sort of in the range of what people would be willing to pay on an inferior lot.

I think Mr. Clark's lot is superior.

And certainly a back home is superior to the frame house with the vinyl sodding.

Sorry, we have that property listed

in fair condition in our records, that particular sale.

It's fair as above $400 most of the time.

Correct.

Yes.

Did that property have, did not.

I'm just looking at the numbers.

and in this last year, the assessment went up 1.59%.

Is that because the market went up and you discounted it?

Yes, it would have been the market for the neighborhood went up.

Overall for the county, it went up 3 to 4%.

I think it was three and a half percent somewhere in there.

So everything residential went generally that amount, you know, different neighborhoods might have changed slightly differently.

In the Stagecoach Road neighborhood, the increase across the whole neighborhood was 2.61% for the assessments, and Mr. Clark's went up maybe 2%.

As a realtor, I appreciate your giving a description of TLC.

You're very kind on that.

When a realtor tells me TLC, to me that means something different.

Yeah, so I'm looking at the listing.

I mean, it looks in pretty average shape, falling down gutters.

It's noted that it's sold in as-is condition, which usually indicates to me that it needs more than TLC.

Yes.

But I wasn't in the property.

So if that one's assessed at 250 and it sold for around 250 and it was marked as fair,

whereas the subject properties marked as poor.

What would be the differential in price between fair and poor, Peter, just out of curiosity?

But remember the subject also has 15% additional on top of the poor.

I will tell you.

And then you reduce it another 15% beyond poor?

Yeah.

Correct.

So that's a... And you have it at poor minus an additional 15%.

Correct.

Correct.

Oh, I'm sorry.

The $400,200 would be with just fair condition without the 15%.

I was thinking that was a little high.

I feel like you're adequately discounting the value of the house for its condition.

And so I don't question that number.

But I am looking at the land and the location and the two roads there.

I know that

In previous years we had a house on the north side of town and it was located next to the school and we found that that factor was significant enough to discount the value of the land and I don't know if anybody wants to question this part of it or look at it and decide whether the land should be discounted back to

Can I comment on that?

Yes.

So a coincidence, that was another former county employee.

And that was the issue mainly was that there was a lot of traffic that went to the school.

This property does not suffer from that traffic issue.

That was the essence of that problem.

We have Covenant School.

We have a huge amount of traffic because of Covenant School.

And they go by the one side back to the school.

That property was half a block away from the school itself and everybody went right down the road it was on.

Absolutely, I've got it right here.

Now I'm going to attempt to share my screen again.

I had some problems switching last time, but let's see if we can get it on.

All right.

Can you see the map?

Yes.

Okay.

So the property in blue, that's his on the corner.

Yes, that is the county office building right there.

And as I know it, there's a lot of traffic on the front side, but they do not want the public to access any of the other offices in the county office building through the police department so that everybody

Well, as a farmer, I have to go up there so I know that there's a fair bit of traffic going through there.

It may look like everything's happening on the front, but the police don't want anybody to use their entrance.

You can go in through the loop or not the loop.

I've never gone in the back.

You have to come up that level.

You can't go from the bottom there, but you can come from the front to the middle.

All right.

I don't.

I did want to respond to the value ranges for the neighborhood.

You asked me to look that up until we have a low of 166,400, improved property all the way to a high of 439,500.

Let's see.

Question.

Where the house is located?

So it looks like there were 60.

The report pulled 64 parcels.

or several parcels.

It's land valued at $1,000, $2,000.

I included that.

I included the first parcel that had an improved value.

And then this happens to be a really low improvement value of 27,700.

So total value of 166.4.

That's the highest one?

Yeah.

That's a duplex.

There's duplexes on that end of Stagecoach Road.

Okay, and I can give you the next highest one is

I don't have the address pulled up.

Pete, maybe you can put the address.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

See, I'm concerned with the properties that are on Oak Hill Drive specifically and not located in Willoughby and different areas of the county.

I think when you look at the sales of Oak Hill Drive by itself, except for the very end where there's a new subdivision of Oak Hill with all new homes in that area, but

They got their own little neighborhood back there, but anyway.

Yeah, my concern is the actual location, being next to the police department, high amount of traffic from Covenant School, also the condition of the home.

I think all those factor in.

Yeah, there again Stagecoach is quieter once you get past the police station, it's a very quiet neighborhood.

Really, that's not even used anymore because of the Fifth Street extended out here.

I was just going to say that.

Which one?

It's right next door on stagecoach.

Next door to me would be the Chisholm's house, Roy Chisholm.

He's got a bigger lot than I do.

His house is definitely in move-in condition.

Yeah, we have more money on the lot.

That's a pretty much bigger lot.

It's 2.8.

And we have it in average condition.

and there again, that's their assessment.

They haven't put it on market, haven't sold it.

Yeah, we talked about sales, first of all, and we presented those, but we were just talking about the range of values in the neighborhood, so that's why we're talking about assessments now.

Okay.

Well, I hope I helped shed some light on the situation and just feel like the

The physical property's gone up 25,000 in a couple of years, and I just, with no improvements done, I just can't, you know, see how it would go up in value that much.

But anyway, I will await to hear from you in two weeks.

All right.

And I do appreciate your time this morning.

I know it's hard for you guys to get together, especially these days.

and you have to put a lot of time in.

All right, thank you, Mr. Clark.

We will send you a, we will discuss this and then we will send you a letter within the two weeks.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, Mr. Clark.

Thank you.

Just kind of what I've said, I think the value's appropriate.

All right.

Mr. Ferrell?

Agreed.

I think at the end of the day, I'm fine.

The structure, like I said, I would be more comfortable if we had more comps that would be a little bit better or worse condition.

but I don't know what the highest and best use of this land is because obviously putting the value on the 1.75 acres, it is zone R2.

It looks like the comp plan has a neighborhood density residential.

So I wonder if the value really there is more for development.

I don't know what rights there are for development over there but if you bought this property and you bought the property next door, you have five acres there,

I can address that if you'd like, from what we know.

The area, I mean, obviously you could develop in R2 two acres per, two units per acre, but there are no utilities there, so it would make it difficult at the moment.

Okay.

Well you could probably you could probably do two units you know and still have a septic system.

Sure.

We would assess it as having excess land if that was excess land that was used.

You actually have the house in place on one part of the lot and then have excess land that you could actually improve with an additional house.

but the excess or the additional land over that first half acre, we have a lot of reductions on because of that lack of utilities and the layout of the parcel.

Correct.

So I'm looking at it, I see, okay, land is just viable, the improvements of 151, that's, I mean, with the condition of property, that's the only thing, if we're actually talking about $100,000 in improvements, I don't know if you can improve it $100,000 if that'll,

David, you probably know this better in terms of the residential market.

And I think the Yeah, I don't know if you know these comps any better.

That's that's the only thing is just like that's this is one of the more expensive or the one like next door is one of the highest assessed ones.

This technically if it was in good shape would be one of the highest assessed properties in the neighborhood.

I don't even think it needs a hundred thousand from what he described.

By the way, I did ask Mr. Clark if he had got an estimate for work to be done and he said he did not.

Has anyone been inside the house?

Like what's the kitchen like?

What's the bathrooms like?

I was not in the house because of the COVID situation.

I tried to schedule for the BOE, and he wasn't available, but I just did an exterior inspection.

But there are photos online from the 2017 interior inspection that was done that we relied upon, and Mr. Clark said nothing had changed.

I can try to bring those up for you.

That would help me.

Just have a sense of what we're looking at.

Well, I would tend to agree with Bill.

It's on a corner lot.

Well, at least there wasn't when we put that adjustment on there.

Those things change over time and we don't necessarily keep up.

Right.

So I think that the market value for the land seems appropriate.

I'd like to look at the pictures.

Can you see the pictures now?

Yes.

OK.

Yeah.

I can go to that.

What's the best way to bring that up?

Oh, wait a minute.

I need to switch it back.

I had changed it to fair to look at the, no, it's at poor, okay.

It is very high, yes.

Yeah, okay.

There's the garage.

Okay.

Yeah, it's not that bad.

I mean, the condition.

It needs updating.

Yeah.

But it's not.

Yeah, I don't think it's too bad.

Yeah, right.

Right.

There are occupied houses that are not in the best shape.

I mean, that's true.

Mr. Lynch has done a good job of discounting

I have no, after seeing the pictures I feel comfortable with the building value.

and I think on the flip side of the land, just with the potential of having the subdivision right, I think that at a minimum takes away from the location.

So I would be fine with, I can go ahead and I will move to affirm the value.

All in favor?

Aye.

Karen?

She said aye.

Very good.

She just froze, though.

Very good.

Thank you, everyone.

Can we talk about Rodriguez?

Thank you, Jim, for joining us.

Yes.

All right.

So,

You guys, when Mr. Van Roijen got knocked off during the last meeting, you talked a little bit about Rodriguez.

And if you can remember what you had talked about, you might want to recap that.

No, whoever wants to, Anthony can go first.

Just generally, we were talking, I was focusing on that Blandomar list sale and trying to figure out, because we, I think you, what was the, do you remember offhand?

I think I wrote it down, what the cost was for the, where the permit was on the Blandomar one, like 2.5, I think it was.

I believe it was 2.4.

2.435.

Yeah.

So I was focusing on the costs there.

The location seemed to be really nice.

Yeah.

My concern, and I spoke to Mr. Lynch about this briefly yesterday, is that

Four years ago, Mr. Lynch said we're going to focus in on neighborhoods and work on the assessments in neighborhood areas.

And here we have a neighborhood with no real sales.

And we have a house that is way overpriced for the neighborhood.

Those may be perfect for the owner.

Rural areas and I live

across the mountain here from Blandomar.

And so I'm always over there looking around to see what people do.

I'm nosy.

And people build these houses.

Many of them are six bedroom houses.

They're 65.

They live in there for about four years, five years, mowing grass.

And then they decide it's too big for them.

And they put it on the market for everything they put into it.

And they can't get it.

I suspect that Mr. Rodriguez has built a fabulous home in a neighborhood that won't support the money that he's put into it.

And I have no doubt about the condition.

I guess my real concern is do we discount him on a square footage basis relative to his neighbors?

How do we do this?

Now Mr. Lynch has said to me that it's been a number of years since he spent the 3.1 million dollars on the property and therefore it should certainly get appreciated to some extent.

I don't know.

I simply took a quick number and just on the house itself, averaging out the

square footage values and used $306 a square foot and came up with a $2.26 million valuation for his house.

Now that's discounting it for the neighborhood and so forth.

I don't know if you want to do that or whether you want to just say

It's a multimillion dollar house and it's gonna sell for huge numbers.

It's certainly not Farmington.

It's not Blandomar.

Any other comments?

I think location wise, it's a pretty good location.

It's near Crozet and it has a view.

And I think it might be superior to Blandomar.

but my issues with that structure, like on the structural, I think land value is fully supported and it might be actually higher.

I think the issue is the structure.

Oh, on the inside, I don't know.

Louis, do you know if we have interior pictures?

I did not take pictures of the inside just because as we were going through, he seemed a little

Nancy about that kind of thing.

So I didn't get any on the inside, but again, I can attest that it's a really exceptional house in terms of quality, just lots of custom items, custom trim.

I did some calculations as well, whether or not they're, how helpful they are.

Right.

But the structure, because we know what the prices of the structures were.

They're very similar in age.

They're two years apart in age.

I'm just curious.

Oh, well, this one is, so that one was originally was built for 2.435.

This one was 3.09.

Just looking at it depreciation-wise,

I just calculated, it looks like it was depreciated about 19%, but this house is also two years newer, so I don't know if that should be a little bit less, but if you take the 19% off the 3.1, and I don't know if this is the appropriate way to do that, but if you take a similar discount off that, then you come up with 2.493,

and right now the structural value is about 2.9.

So it was like a pretty significant difference and land are more sold for less than the assessed value.

I just noticed who the owners of Blandomar are.

They're actually our new neighbors in our neighborhood.

and they just built a house over here, I guess it's two acres, so they went from the 42 acres to two acres, I think that was, they didn't wanna cut it out.

People build unusual things or overbuild in neighborhoods and

They're not readily saleable for what they put into them.

And I see this as one of those instances.

So you're making a case for, I guess, some economic obsolescence based on the location of the property in a subdivision of much less expensive homes.

I personally don't consider it a subdivision.

I consider it a road that has lots on it.

I don't consider it really much of a neighborhood.

And I go back to Blandomar.

I mean, that house was on the market for 788 days in Blandomar.

There's something about Blandomar I think David points to.

These people come, build these huge things, and then no one wants to buy it.

Lots aren't really selling in there either.

There's something about, and for a long time there's no internet there either.

That part of, you know, half mile branch that then turns onto Jarman's Gap, that

That little area right around the vineyard is, you know, the property values do tend to be pretty high there.

Even though I would agree with you, this is in a, I mean, Harvest Farms is a subdivision and it does seem to be the most expensive one in that subdivision.

It's a killer property.

I don't know if any of you were on it.

I was on it when they were building it.

It's incredible.

Just incredible.

I was surprised he said this was a lesser builder than the one in Blandomar.

That surprised me.

This is a smaller house that had a higher permit by 20%.

They spent a lot of money on this house.

I always think back to that humble Mr. Woods questioning $19 million on his building and selling it the next year for $37 million.

Always think back on that.

I reflect fondly.

I don't know.

I suspect they'd ask $4 million for this stuff.

That wouldn't surprise me if they asked $3,995 or something and see what happens.

I'm concerned that it's been consistently assessed for around $4 million for 10 years.

And I don't know why he's just sort of, I guess he started addressing it three years ago.

Is that right, Peter?

Yes, I can.

So one of the years he actually appealed the lot, the other separate tax parcel that's next to him that's vacant, that he kind of bought extra for another 300,000.

The five acre one.

Yeah, five acre, five to seven acre, something like that.

And he was addressing that one year.

We did not make a change on that one.

This one,

We addressed, adjusted the land.

It all comes down to this 10 parcel neighborhood.

We had this 10 parcel neighborhood where we had a land sale that was very high and we had adjusted the home site up and that brought all of the land value up.

The problem was he has his 40 some acres in a subdivision of five acre parcels.

And it was the translation of that

that model into the 40 acres that caused the problem and we fixed that as a part of the review earlier this year.

So we changed the land value from 1.41 million to 1,056,000.

That's the total market value for it.

and it was based on addressing the residual land value and not necessarily the home site itself where the home sits.

So have you put two acres with the house or more?

Yeah, here I'll bring it up but I think it's three and a half.

But it's very clear when you look at these properties where the mowed grass is, is three and a half acres.

Where the actual yard is compared to the rest of the property.

So is the rest of the property in land use?

Yes, it's under forestry.

Not the entire rest of the property.

There's some non-qualified open areas because he's only qualified as forestry.

He doesn't do any agriculture.

So yeah, I can bring that up also.

He has the three and a half acre home site, 7.9 acres of other non-qualifying, which is the other cleared areas that are not supporting the house or not forestry.

And then the remainder 30 some acres of forestry.

So his land is assessed at a value of $445,000.

I'm just comparing it to the Blandomar.

The Blandomar structure-wise was depreciated 19%.

It's two years older.

On this one, it's, I guess, 9%.

Or I guess it's actually looks to be less, because 2.881 is the improvement, based on actual how much they

Mr. Arsali, did you want me to bring that other property up in Blandomar?

Yeah, just really all I care about is the depreciation.

Okay, what was the property?

Of the model, okay.

Right.

Because the, I'm just looking at it based off of the permit number.

Okay.

On that one was about 18%.

18 or 19, I just calculated it, it was 19%.

We actually have an adjustment in Blandomar because it kind of follows what Mr. Ferrell was saying of minus 20% for Blandomar for the improvements overall for every property in Blandomar.

And we also have this property as an L, which is a luxury instead of a luxury plus.

So it's about 35%.

It's a 3.15 multiplier in the model as opposed to a 3.5 multiplier for an L plus one.

I just want to make sure we're just the depreciation is consistent that's that's right well it's because we know the actual um the actual building costs of these two buildings and they're built around the same time where right the building cost will be around that time that's that's that's my only concern I think land like is it land value I think is well justified improvement value

but this is actually performing our house.

So I'm looking at the interior of Landomar and I mean, you know, it looks nice, but it looks like just sort of basic trim.

There's no trim upstairs, you know, sort of standard granite in the kitchen.

Yeah, the kitchen's big, but it looks like a nice house.

It looks like solid surface in the laundry room.

I mean, it certainly looks nice, but

I have no doubt that it's an L1 or that it's a fabulous house.

And if I was actually thinking about it, I would think the land is too low.

But he keeps buying it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay.

Got it.

And I think there would be a better case for that obsolescence that you're talking about, David, if the

if the land size was smaller.

So if he had a typical, you know, five or six acre lot in harvest farms, and he had built a $3 million house on it, but he's got 43 acres.

And so, you know, he would suffer less from that type of obsolescence, from being overbuilt, given the fact that he has a much larger lot.

You do see that occasionally,

in these, you know, the preservation track properties where you've got this larger remainder parcel of, you know, 50 to 100 acres in a subdivision of smaller lots.

Yeah, there's a perfect example right now in Ragged Mountain of that.

Right.

I mean, he's an accountant and he's buying up land.

Right.

I mean, the question, I think that ultimately, do we think this property would sell $4 million?

Well, before we get to that, I do have, I did want to ask one question back to your observation about the depreciation estimates.

Based off of your models, Peter,

Oh, yes, yes.

The Blandomar property is, I believe, two years older and it's got 2% more depreciation.

It's the difference between 11% and 9%.

I'd like to say something.

I basically wanted to keep my mouth shut because you guys, Dave and Karen, much more experience in a residential market.

But I took kind of a modified approach that David did.

I looked at the sales.

I'm a sales guy.

I mean, I get nervous when you get into estimating depreciation unless you're doing something that clearly requires a cost approach to value.

and so I looked at the sales, spread them out and took out the land values and then divided it by just the living area, I didn't get into the base.

And the range, the subject would be 388 or 389 a foot.

Number one would be 475, number two is 243.

number three was 203, four was 278, and five was 409.

You know, we looked at these properties on Google Earth and the ones there on Thomas Jefferson Parkway and there on St. John's Road are pretty spectacular properties.

I mean, and so if you throw those out and you do this, if you use this value,

for what he thinks his improvements are, it'll be 283 a foot.

So that's sort of in the range, got 243, 208, let me do 208, 243, 278, and 283.

Just because they're pretty spectacular properties.

I mean, the one on, to me, I mean, this is the way it grabbed me.

And that the ones that on Thomas Shifton Parkway is right there, you know, two doors down from Monticello.

Yeah.

I mean, that's linked somehow to that winery, according to the road system there.

So I don't know, that's pretty,

I think that one would sell for every day of the week.

I don't think Mr. Rodriguez's house is gonna sell that well for what he paid for it.

And the other one is saying they just seem like pretty spectacular properties and great view there.

I give him that, but it just seems like, it just seemed to me to be a little bit out of line.

I'm looking at the properties on my other computer, so that's why my eyes are there.

I'm just trying to figure out.

I think, like I said, I'm going back.

If the depreciations are similar and they're consistent between the Bland and Moore, Bland and Moore ended up selling for a little bit less than even the discounted rate, but that might also be Bland and Moore.

If we think that as of January 1st, that's the big question, and I don't know.

I think today it would, just seeing what happened to the market since all the social distancing stuff and everything else, I think these big properties are selling.

Whether or not as of January 1st, 2020, it would have sold for 4 million, I don't know, and I'm not, I wouldn't be an expert on that.

I think we're being consistent, that's the thing.

I think it's being consistent enough, because Blanomarle being the closest one, its appreciation's similar, and the costs were,

Substantially different, I guess, when they built it.

So that's where I'm at.

Like I said, in the land, like I said, the land value is definitely justified.

So it's just the structure.

So I am, I would be okay with affirming based on that, as long as there's a belief that they could have sold out at that point.

My biggest, like I said, my biggest hang up was the depreciation part.

Yeah.

And that's what we have to question.

And as you have said and I have said, you can't use something like Blandomar or Farmington as comparables because they're really not.

They may be

expensive houses, but a house selling in Farmington is totally different than Blandomar.

So we need to sort of eliminate looking at these large mansions, I guess, in the middle of different neighborhoods.

So we go back to the neighborhood model, we go back to what he paid for it, we go back to his square footage,

Karen's right, there's a lot of land around it.

But we're not questioning the assessment of the land.

The question is- Well, I would suggest the land is low, but that would just be me.

Peter, what do we say about that?

Well, I just want to say that I don't think Ms. Pape was saying that the property value is high because the land is big.

I think she's saying that what you were talking about with extra depreciation for this large house might not be supported because it's a large parcel.

No, that's correct.

Which is why we provided what we provided in the packet.

I mean, the problem is, you start with this 10 parcels and that's not the neighborhood.

You even expand it out into the market area surrounding it and there's still not sales that have taken place that we can compare to it, which is why we have,

to broaden that search.

And as I mentioned to you yesterday as we were talking, it's really what is the market?

The market for this house would not be I'm looking in this neighborhood.

I'm looking for a spectacular house with spectacular views sitting by a vineyard somewhere in Albemarle County.

So that makes the entire county the market for this type of property.

you know as long as you're looking at areas that have similar you know positives to them like views and and location stuff like that and and this is a a nice area of the county it has nice views of the mountains has nice views it has king's family vineyard so so this is not an unusual place I think there's a gentleman that owns the the electronics store in the in the

in the county.

He has a very large house near Dunlora.

It is totally out of place and we adjust it quite a bit for being a large house in the wrong place.

The same thing with Mr.

Mr. Wood's house up on the mountain.

You have a limited market of people who are going to pay full market value or full normal market value for a 14,000 square foot home on top of a mountain that they have a hard time getting to.

So those things we do adjust for.

It is limited, yes.

It's limited, but it's not non-existent.

is certainly a lot smaller market than number of people, buyers and sellers wise than the $300,000 market.

I mean, I go back to Mrs. Kluge and her subdivision.

and I remember her coming before a committee I was on and she was gonna build these beautiful houses, these $5 million houses in her own little subdivision that everybody wanted to live next to her.

Well, I mean, she built a couple houses.

They didn't sell and nobody wanted to live next to her and this man has built a beautiful luxury one house but

Right.

And we're not talking about something as nebulous as Tom Cruise lives next door.

This is more enduring with the location and the views than something like that.

you should drive out there okay i mean i know those areas out there but i don't i don't remember this subdivision i wouldn't hear when the bank the banks the loans those yeah okay um but yeah i i think the location potentially i mean somebody would buy something in that area for that much it's not that i think this is definitely a superior location to to some of the places um yeah unless i don't see anything jarring to change it i don't see any

and he hasn't given, I don't think there's a sufficient, I wish we had comp, we don't have comps and I don't recall what our standard was in terms of is it the applicant's burden to show us that the number should go down and if it's the applicant's burden I don't think the applicant's met that because there aren't comps, unfortunately there aren't comps and then it's consistent, my concern was internal inconsistencies and there don't seem to be that so.

As long as the applicants heard, and we don't have the pictures, I wish he gave us more pictures to show us maybe it's not L plus one, it's L, but based on, he doesn't have it, and based on the testimony, we'll go with the L plus one, so that's, I think at this point, I'm convinced to go to a permit, but.

I'm with Anthony as well, because in looking at the prices per square foot of the comparable sales that he provided us,

Bill you're right they ranged from I think according to his estimates 237 to 388 and he's at this is exclusive exclusive of the land and he was at something like 372 but he's got all that hardscape he's got the finished basement he's got the swimming pool he's got extraordinary landscaping and unfortunately we haven't seen the interior photographs but

By his own admission, it's a very, very nice house.

Well, you know, I'm okay with that.

I agree with the majority here.

And I guess, Anthony, it was his point about him making his case.

It's almost like we were arguing his case for him, trying to figure out what it was.

And in reality, he didn't.

I mean, he's using cops in his own neighborhood, which

You know, he could use a town hall and an old trail if he wanted to.

It would be just as bad.

Okay.

All right.

We have a motion.

Mr. Arsali's made the motion.

Mr. Ferrell will second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

I'm guessing he won't be here until 11.

It's 8 o'clock in the morning in Phoenix, so I wouldn't expect him much earlier than that.

OK, great.

Thank you guys very much.

All right, thank you.

I'm just going to mute and stop.

18 and 19, yeah, they put in an application for each parcel.

Okay.

And this is one with

I'm sorry?

No, go on.

Okay.

Correct.

And this is the last item until we have one more appeal that we've received.

And we have to inspect it on Thursday.

The woman was not available during the period we normally looked at it.

And so we were looking at it on Thursday.

We're going to see if there's anything that we need to adjust in the first place.

If it continues, then we will schedule it on one of the days that we have.

We'll give you at least a week in advance notice before we... Is that the only possible one at this point?

No, there are some more reviews that I'm still working on that I think we're down to seven.

They're all development parcels, so they're all complicated, and I'm trying to make sure that we have all the information gathered that we need to get them completely correct, or as close as we can to reasonable evaluation as we can.

And then I will send those responses.

They will have 30 days after that.

I think they'll know pretty quickly they won't need 30 days of whether they're going to

All right, thank you.