Board of Equalization Meeting   7/7/2023

Good morning, everyone.

It is 8.32 AM.

I'm going to call this meeting of the Board of Equalization to order.

We do have a quorum.

All five members are present.

I guess we'll wait on approving the minutes.

We'll go ahead and get started with the hearings.

Our first case number is the Dunroe POE application number 28, PID 2954.

The applicant is Dunroe and Farm, LLC.

The board is comprised of five citizens of Albemarle County who are appointed by the board of supervisors.

We're an independent board.

Here's how the hearing will look.

You will have 10 minutes to present your case.

The assessor will have seven minutes to present theirs, and then you'll have another three minutes for rebuttal.

During the hearing, we may stop to ask you and the assessor questions.

Please note that per Virginia law, there is a presumption of correctness.

The burden of proof is on you as the applicant.

Before we begin, I'm going to go ahead and swear in the witnesses, whoever is planning on testifying, please raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony, both oral and documentary, which you're about to give, will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Thank you.

All right.

If you may know, I've lived in this county for

on the same farm, as a matter of fact, for 52, 53 years.

As you see, they're unshaped up there inside the blue.

But I found that piece of property 53 years ago.

It had no red frontage, but it had a little bit of land.

And I decided I wanted to live here the rest of my life then.

I'd come from rural West Virginia in North Central Park with my family when I was 15 years old and then came to UVA and spent time as an undergraduate and then medical school and four years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon.

Back then in those dark ages, every man had to spend at least two years in the military to,

but we had to and then came back after the Air Force and took a residency at UVA as well so I'm a triple wahoo for whatever good or bad that is but I decided to live here because the topography of western Elmar County was very similar to the rural topography of West Virginia where I had grown up and

the people were kind of country as well that fit with me especially well so they moved there and been happy there for a long long period of time and then recently it came up with somebody else sort of a realtor friend of mine we talked about properties and how properties were getting expensive and whatever now

Now that I've been retired for 15 years from a business that I had, I have been raising purebred registered herford beef cattle on that farm for almost 50 years, 46, 48 years.

And I've done it

because I love that.

Frankly, when I worked in an office with people all day long, most of them would be fantastic.

They might be one every day or every other day would be so frustrating that you couldn't please no matter what.

And so rather than take it out on my wife or cats or whatever like this, I'd go home and mow the yard or get on a bush hog and cut grass or something.

I love the country because of that.

was not only a moneymaker, but it was my therapy to relax from stress.

And so we lived there well, had a family subdivision, and

We've raised four children that are very adults and incredibly all four of those children have jobs locally.

We gave each one of them two acres a little bit more of the family subdivision.

And we're one of the few older couples in the country that I know of that are fortunate enough to have our four grown children and their families living on the same farm with us.

And that's,

A great blessing.

But we had three older houses on the place to begin with that were run down when I found it.

And they were really in terrible shape.

We slowly built those up.

Those are rental houses.

They've been there for a long period of time.

So we came to worry about the taxes because no matter how good a job I do, raising and selling purebred seed stock, perfect cattle, now that I'm retiring,

I can't make enough money doing what I think is a really good job.

My father did the same thing in West Virginia, had Richard Herford Beefy decades ago.

It's just hard to make ends meet now.

And so I'm saying, hey, now that my retirement is going,

I worry about that.

So I started talking to neighbors about taxes and how are you meeting Vinnie?

How are you making enough money to do that?

And they said, well, it's difficult, but we try our best.

And of course you guys try your best too.

All difficult to do.

So I decided, I talked to a couple of realtors, good friends of mine being around a long period of time, Ross Stevens,

and his family forever, and Mike Guthrie, Roy Wheeler and others.

And they said, hey, you ought to see if you can get, because of your family subdivision, you have no road frontage at all, and 20 foot deeded right away, quarter of a mile to get to your farm.

You can't sell divided parts of it.

So,

It's difficult.

One of the realtors that I had talked to had said, hey, a person with an $80,000 car will not drive two or three miles on Clark Dirt Gravel Road

with their $80,000 car, they won't even come.

So that's not even an option for them to come to look at the property.

And with four houses on it, my children plus one of ours now, my wife and I have a retirement home there as well, and three older houses.

There's eight houses on that front part of the property, about 40 acres.

The rest of it is very steep.

and a lot of outbuildings, a lot of barns.

So there's not a whole lot of places to put a house to have good savoring with all that cluttering there.

And so I decided it might be worthwhile to explore the possibility of seeing if we could get the taxes reduced a little bit so I could afford to live there a little bit longer.

came down and ran into Mark down here and talked to him back in January or February.

And he said, yes, you can apply to get that done.

And so I have done so and talked to people and Mr. Jim Faulkner, I know as well, we've been going to the same,

Bible study together over at Farmington for years.

And so he said, hey, I'll help you and I'll write something for you.

And that's what you've got here in front of you.

So that's my story.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

So we have this property as you can see on the map.

I zoomed it out so you could see what we call market area 139, which is kind of that pinkish color.

So it is a 143-acre parcel.

It includes, we have three houses on this parcel.

Mr. Richardson was referring to some other parcels that are owned by his children that are for the family subdivisions, but those are not part of this appeal.

And so we have three homes on this parcel.

They are relatively low

Davies, I believe, the assessment on the homes

including all the outbuildings is 352,800.

The majority of the value is in the land.

The market value is in the land.

So we have $1.2 million approximately on the total market value of the land.

And the way we assess that is we have three home sites on it for the three homes.

but also the other parts of the property you know which if you look at the aerial photograph some of this is mountainous so we adjusted for the you know all of that slope and the size so we're adjusting the property for all of those issues that it faces and

So the issues that really are being dealt with here are the access through that gravel road and topography and other issues on the property.

The property itself is in land use, is being taxed.

The land is only being taxed at $206,700.

That's mainly because of the home sites.

Assessments, but basically most of the value here that's actually being assessed is the homes and the home sites, and those are relatively modest for the size of the property.

We have sales within the market area 139,

There are five sales that took place in 2022 and they support our model.

We are at 99.4 or 0.994 median ratio and our COD is pretty tight.

So those sales, as you see them, they range from 87 to 115% on the sales.

The...

we get a little more detail on three of the comparables and you know there's a wide range of properties here 102 acre parcels with a C grade house a 44.8 acre parcel with the B plus two grade house and then a smaller 11 acre parcel with the D grade house this gives kind of a wide

Doctor, we're going to have time for rebuttal.

I wanted to ask you a couple questions before just what so is there specific concerns that you've seen the breakdown I assume with the tax assessment for this

No, I think my concern is that there are not many, and I'd like to know Mr. Lynch, if any of the properties that he talked about are,

properties that are all of a sudden they can't raise the land, the family subdivision ordinance and such because not having road frontage keeps you from selling any properties off at the thing because we have no division rights whatsoever, none.

And

If we had road frontage, then we'd have a better chance of having be able to sell off pieces of property inside.

So I don't think that that many people in the farm in the country and the

and Jim Faulkner when he put out his piece on this, he found a comparable equidistant from Charlottesville that had a family subdivision as well and had no frontage.

And they had pictures of that in there and said, this is what this sells for.

So I think that the county in the past has not,

I think the county in the past has not recognized the difficulty it is to sell family subdivision property.

And I think that makes a big difference.

Yes, Dr. Richardson, I do have a couple of questions for you.

So it's my understanding.

And it's nice to see you.

Yes, ma'am.

Good night.

You were patient?

I'm sorry.

Okay.

I saw 60,000 patients.

So it's my understanding.

So when you keep referring to the family divisions, family subdivision, it appears to me based on your plat, that you had a piece of land and you availed yourself of the five

small division rights through the family division method.

So those have been stripped off.

So in theory, you would have 21 acre remainder parcels, but you really don't because of that 20 foot wide access easement.

Is that correct?

Okay, so then my question would go back to the assessor.

So interesting situation here because we have three houses on this property

But we did get a reduced value.

On all additional home sites on a parcel, we get a reduced value.

It's 20% less than the regular home site.

And then it could be different sizes.

Yeah, we include the same two acres on each one.

So each one is assessed at two acres, but at a 20% lower rate.

Because they're not currently subdivided into separate, you couldn't sell them as separate houses and home sites until something happened that in which you subdivided them and made that possible.

It's just so you can read it.

It's 87.3 for the first one, then 60.

Oh, 69.8.

What's an interesting dilemma, isn't it?

Well, I wouldn't say never.

I would say currently you can't, but in almost every case, you can work through and make these things happen.

I don't know the details of.

So I mean, typically, if you rebuild on what's there or renovate what's there, you can do that.

Dr. Chien, I'll bring it back to you.

You have your rebuttal time.

Well, yes, just reiterate some of the same things.

It would be very difficult to tell if there's 21 acres with a house, an old house that's on it.

But we could

sell that maybe to one of our relatives, close relatives and, or give it to them.

But it's, you'd have five years of rollback taxes, you know, from the family, the land use taxation we've got anyway, and developers are smart.

They find out how to take land and make it into profitable places.

but to do that on the side of the hill and rural Albemarle County, I don't think the developers would be so happy to do that with that many buildings on that property already and then try to do, roll back on everything that's there and then write it up, they can find something a little closer to town to make the big bucks on it.

I just don't think it's as likely to happen in the rural area of the county where we're in.

Any other questions from the board?

I do have one other question.

You're contesting generally the land value.

Well, then I will thank you for your time.

We will confirm a decision, and we'll have a decision out to you within the next two weeks.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yes, sir, Dr.

We used the RS3, which is the lowest rate.

Plus we brought it down 30% for topography and shape and then size.

So it's a little less than half in value.

And where,

Let's shake some layers off here.

It's up in the Whitehall area.

Yeah, there's the border all the way up here.

Is there anything taken off for the road?

Yeah, we do it at 10% for the access.

And where are the building sites?

The three, are they right next to each other or are they?

I can show you where the towns are.

Are they all right?

So there's one.

We'll either make them smaller sites.

It really matters.

I mean, we've had them right up against each other.

So that is the only access they have.

Yeah, when will you access through somebody else's?

And that applies for all the parts or just the sites or all of these parts, including the family divisions.

Yeah, that's, my thought would be just with the home site, especially with, I don't know how much we're supposed to take into consideration with land use, obviously that's where the reduction's gonna be is on the home site system, not the land use.

Because if you have a property that could be easily divided, but you're still going to do the planning and everything, and you set a 20% reduction in value, it certainly makes sense.

But in this instance, it burns down, it rebuilds back, you can't replace it.

It's really far away.

Well, that Birken's Creek I know is right.

Location on that one's a lot more, much more premium.

That's right.

Yeah.

My preference is to make the decision now if we can, but if we feel like we need to spend a little more time on this, we can table it.

No, I'm cool with it either way.

If you want to do the additions, cool.

If we want to affirm, I'm cool.

I got 15% rather than 10%.

I don't know if we should do it across the board for all.

Should we do it on the residual as well?

Pete, do you mind pulling up the signs of the breakdown there?

Yes.

Maybe I'll do it for all of them.

I thought I kind of deferred, Karen, I don't know what your thoughts are there.

Oh, yeah.

Right now we've got 87, 69, 69 for the home sites.

Well, I don't know that the first home site needs to be reduced, because they could tear all those buildings down and still have a home site, sell that property and have a home site.

but I don't think that we fully address the fact that there is a potential divisibility issue with this property since it's been stripped of its division rights through family divisions and then it's further division of the remainder parcels would be at this time very limited.

So we in the rural area, we typically, because we cannot evaluate the ability to use or even how many division rights a property has, because there is no database of exactly how many division rights each property has in the county.

And it's very hard to determine.

And even if you know that number, it's hard to determine if you can actually use them because of different issues.

And you could go on for hours about all the different things you have to do in order to use a division right.

So we do not value those division rights.

We'll value

all the rest is residual and that residual land is typically not affected by the same effect on that on the home site the only thing that it is is the location that's the only thing that really goes from both the home site and the residual land but any access really applies for the home access to the home not access to

So we generally don't do that adjustment on residual.

I didn't even mention that it was more of a $80,000 vehicle on site.

What's that?

The two home sites?

I'm just seeing the adjustments that have been made.

So this is just the access point nine.

We don't have a topography.

I mean, I would suggest we at least bring it down to point eight.

What does that break it down to?

Sixty two eight.

I would say, yeah, I think that's it's a tough one.

And then the question is, should we do anything with the residual or leave that?

The only only one I have a concern or issue is just you did put a pretty substantial change with the that balance.

Is that just the one that you have valued at that?

Which is, what is that John?

Is that your critical slope?

And right now, what do you have the adjustment there for the top?

3300 acre now.

I am, sure.

The total land value is 1,138,400.

Not for the land, total.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

This is $1,382,800.

So the new total is 149.1.200.

Okay, okay.

Oh, the subset, yeah.

So it'll be a small change.

There is a rollback, I guess.

Okay, so we're ready for our next hearing.

Good morning.

I didn't know how many folks would be on this board, so I probably need a few or two.

We can share.

Let me go ahead and call the case.

Let me go ahead and get to you.

So we're the Board of Equalization.

The board is comprised of five citizens of Albemarle County.

We were appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

We are an independent board.

This hearing will work.

You will have 10 minutes to present your case.

The assessor will have seven minutes to present theirs, and then you'll have another three minutes for revival.

During the hearing, we may stop to ask you any assessor questions.

Please note that, per Virginia law, there is a presumption of correctness.

The burden of proof is on you as the applicant.

Before we begin, I'm going to be swearing in the witnesses.

Whoever is going to be testifying to this hearing, please raise your right hand.

Thank you.

Do you have any questions before we begin?

All right.

I will take some.

Yeah.

I'm going to state for the record that I am a strong advocate for affordable housing.

So we've welcomed that project.

It's a tremendous project and it's an important piece in the spectrum of affordable housing solutions.

But that's not why we're here today.

Today we're here because this last year, the real estate tax assessment went up by 37%.

916,400 to 125,000.

I think I've got an extra down, extra number in there.

Sorry about that.

So perhaps it wasn't 37%.

But Pete can do the math for us.

He's got his computer in front of us and went up substantially.

A 50-foot setback was created at the point that that rezoning was approved.

And I don't think folks really understood that, and we didn't understand that.

So my husband went forward to ask permission to put a shed on the property.

Pete zooms in.

to the aerial, you'll see the backside against red carpet in, and stands in a little bit further, or I can even point.

But in this area, we were proposing for the shed,

Now with a 50-foot setback restriction, the shed would have to move to approximately here.

And if you think about the whole corridor 50-foot setback, that comprises a constraint of 7,500 square feet.

I'm just describing what our existing conditions today as a result of the zoning decision last year.

And then subsequent to that,

we were asked to pay an assessment 37% higher.

And Pete, you can certainly check my map on that.

I just put in the handout that I gave to you a comparison to another property that we own.

So I'm speaking about properties that we own in the county.

We own this commercial property and we own the Turtle Creek condo.

And so you can just see the data.

I believe that's correct.

2% average growth rate in assessment value.

And we get to a 4% average growth rate on a commercial building.

But in reality, without that 2023 data point, it would be 1%.

I think that's right.

And then I just wanted to point out what comps that staff has been using, Louis and Pete, Louis Herndon, pardon me.

He was probably looking at the AutoZone property that just recently sold.

UVA Real Estate owned that parcel that fronts 29 and they sold an AutoZone, which is wonderful.

We're thrilled to have them.

I was able to run yesterday from the shop to AutoZone to retrieve a cabin air filter when there was no delivery person.

And then Freestyle, I think many of you know and love that Freestyle business sold to a church.

and you can see how that affected the real estate assessments.

When I was speaking to Louis about asking why, he said it was in relation to Route 29.

He and his team members were looking at all of the property values in the corridor and trying to make them more consistent, which I definitely understand that that approach makes a lot of sense.

I think the time in our history though is interesting to think about because we had historic mortgage rates happen in 2021, 2022.

And I think that was what was a factor to allow AutoZone to purchase at the time that they did at the higher rate and also freestyle to be able to sell at that higher rate.

So these are factors that are at play that you all probably don't need to consider mortgage rates

but I just want to put a historical lens on this.

This is a property that we bought in 2016 back when the lower, sorry, the higher mortgage rates were in place.

And our business has been the same.

We use half the building.

We rent from ourselves.

The Challenger LLC is a corporation.

And then we rent the other half to a physical fitness operation.

Previously it was baseball training and now it's baseball training plus physical fitness training.

and we've never changed the rent.

Lewis also explained that 29 access was very important in adjusting the assessment.

But I'd like to point out that this particular parcel, and this is where Pete could zoom out a bit to show you proximity to 29,

It's actually only one direction that's relevant, and you're not gonna know the building is there when you're traveling southbound on 29.

To be able to get to the building, you have to actually turn on Greenbrier.

If you're heading northbound on 29, you have to turn on Greenbrier, take a right on Commonwealth, and then take another right on Westfield.

So that's a awkward,

Well, Route 29 access, this is Susan on record recording using air quotes, because Route 29 access is not technically very accurate.

Okay, that's all I had to share with you today.

Just those two points.

The rezoning was an adverse situation for us.

We may

do more research on this, understand the actual implications and seek recourse.

And then also comparing historic assessment activity in regard to Route 29 per Lewis's argument, Turtle Creek is roughly in the same proximity to Route 29.

So I thought it was also a good data point.

And it's a commercial property.

All right, thank you.

That's the new assessor's office.

So we do want to point out that

The assessment, the values of properties have continued to climb since then.

We have a few sales in the area up to Route 29.

and she mentioned both of them, but for both of them that are very close, the old ski property, retail.

But we have a,

A list of sales all up and down Route 29 that took place in 2022.

So what we did this year is we were able to do with adequate adequate sales.

for this artery is $40 this year per square foot and then create an adjustments scheme for properties based on their differences.

So that $40 is based on frontage on Seminole Trail,

and having highway commercial zoning.

So if it's different from that, we adjust for it.

So if it's a C1 property or a CO property, we will adjust for zoning.

If it's not on the artery, we will adjust for location away from the artery.

But we also have, because Seminole Trail starts at basically at the

Shopping Center, we adjust the values as the properties move north away from Charlottesville.

So we have a layer on here I can show you that gives the full appropriately

So this shows the adjustments that we make for location.

So actually at the shopping center, it's a positive location adjustment, but in this general area on the frontage of Seminole Trail is 100%.

So that's your base $40 a square foot.

As you move back, you see 75%, 70%.

So the subject is 70% of that amount.

and then that happens on both sides of the road.

But as you move north, it drops 90% into 80% until you get up to what we consider a different arteries, airport route, which is the northerly sections of the trail.

So we make all of those adjustments for the properties and it was based on the sales that took place and how they fit within that model.

and support that model for the land.

And then this property is C1 zoning so it has an adjustment for the zoning and actually I'll bring that up for you so you can see the property itself.

So we've got the 10% for zoning for C1 and 30% for the location as you showed on the map.

Okay, so you have the sail right here, right across the street.

Sail over here across Cimot Trail.

So you can see the scattering of sails throughout the

developed and supports the values.

Now this property is generally owner occupied and we value it by the cost approach.

and just one last, you know, there were large increases in some sections of Route 29 this year because of the way we've adjusted the land values throughout that artery so that it was, it really made more sense with the location adjustments and fit the sales.

And we happen to have, you know, quite a few sales that happened that occurred in 2022.

Any questions from the board?

No, actually we didn't know anything about this 50 foot and we're kind of wondering how zoning on a property, a different property, which indicates that that property has 50 foot setbacks actually applies to the neighboring properties.

We don't have an adjustment for that.

Yes, if that's correct.

Yeah, OK.

I'll bring it back to you.

It's important to recognize that time zoning is quite complex and I think Pete and his team do an incredible job and I would encourage you to research the 50 foot setback to be certain on your terms and adjust the five properties accordingly.

We will be forced to go through a

site plan process, but I don't know if that's even the adequate solution.

It may require not necessarily a zoning code amendment, but it could be a very complicated circumstance to be able to get more building on the footprint.

Yeah, it's a significant hardship.

For the shed.

I wasn't managing that.

My husband was managing that.

So I can look to see if he had a letter.

His talents are in auto repair.

Not paperwork.

So I'm stepping in behind him to try and understand what happened at that moment in time that I was running Piedmont Community Land Trust, another affordable housing operation, wherein we were able to put 20 brand new homes at Albemarle County in 90-year families for affordable housing.

So my hands were pretty busy at that moment.

But I will look for that paperwork to see if there was an official letter

Yeah, I think it's, from my understanding, it's just, yeah, the possibility there is the fact that they went to the neighborhood model district and if they're considering that residential and commercial, if there's a residential except commercial, then we have to see what the,

I respectfully disagree with that statement because we were told no to the Shed.

Unfortunately, we're limited on what information we have.

If you do have more information, potentially that'll be helpful.

We'll see how the timing works.

So anyway, I'm kind of just throwing it out.

And I appreciate Pete's work getting to a number of $40 a square foot, because again, in the calculation I do of 7,500 square feet compromised, that's a valuation of $300,000.

Just to point out the impact, he adjusted your grand value down to $25.

So that number instead.

Thank you.

Yes.

And so we'll be looking into the pre-existing rear minimum

I asked a former zoning staff yesterday and he wasn't remembering.

It's triggered when you work with site plan.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Research on this one.

Yeah.

We're going to circle back to this one.

I don't believe that it was triggered by that.

I believe that the 50-foot minimum setback was along the UDA boundary, which was the northwest boundary line of the motel property between the property and Berkeley.

Does that make sense?

Right.

Although, I mean, it does say,

You know, beside the rear minimum, if it's a rural area, it becomes 50 feet.

We have the Place 29.

It might not have anything to do with the other property.

It might have to do with the special use permit and getting a new change.

But I mean, it's very complicated, and it's very hard to get an answer because there's so many parts to it.

Getting a zoning person or somebody in CDD to look at all these possibilities of maybe we want to do this, they just don't do that.

And I wonder if, I mean, that's the other thing just to look up is, was there something submitted that was denied?

And was there a change in the setback triggered by the rezoning adjacent property?

That is something that should be definitive.

Good morning.

I'm Peter.

Oh, okay.

Did you get my message?

I did, but it's not specific enough for me to make a decision about.

Okay.

All right.

So if you wouldn't mind, sure.

We found out information recently about this property.

We thought there was a second home.

It looks exactly like a second home to us, yet it's not.

It's an office.

We have changed it.

We have gotten rid of the home site.

We are no longer calling it a house.

We're calling it a studio.

Well, it was.

Here are the property cards.

We changed you to 686A after the inspection, thinking that was a house.

We have now changed it, all of that.

I had one of those.

You were asking for 562.

So it was a coincidence that came up very close to what you're asking for, but I was wondering if that was acceptable.

561-8 is acceptable.

I've already changed it.

Okay.

So that's what we would be defending today.

So if you were happy with that,

and Ken Withdrawal, if that's okay.

Yeah, and I'll put it on the record.

This is for 74.

74, thank you.

Yeah, patient 74, PID 13657.

The assessor has already reduced the price to 561.8 total value and

but the alphabet withdraws was without records.

Based on that representation, the alphabet will withdraw.

We don't always know everything.

I've prepared just the entire thing.

It took three years to do the counting on the question of whether or not.

It was a mess.

Well, it's nice to meet you, Andy.

Same here.

Thank you very much.

All right, so at this time, our next hearing is at 10.15.

It wouldn't be bad to discuss this then if now we can do it.

There is a break at, yeah, at 2.15, there is a,

and open hearing slot.

23538, so the afternoon ones I showed, the three and then the four, one applicant and one's the other, another applicant.

I mean, I also want to discuss more on that.

So all this it's only applying to five properties and

But it might be, I think it's too late for them.

Yeah, I agree.

You all don't go back.

Okay, so we have to really understand how it affects that before we started applying it to other parcels.

Well, even if there is a setback here, what is the actual effect on it?

It's still your property.

It's still part of your, you have to have a certain number of land.

You can still park on it.

The building's still sitting on, according to this picture.

It's within the 50 feet.

It's within the 50 feet.

What actual effect is it having on this existing property?

Are they talking about completely redoing this building, tearing down the building, and rebuilding a new building?

That doesn't sound reasonable.

This is the shed.

And it's a special day.

I don't think they could potentially move things around.

They could put cars there versus whatever.

And they have the special use permit.

It probably has a special use permit for an honor repair shop.

I don't see anything on here.

That's a building activity.

That doesn't mean there wasn't a conversation.

So let's take a break till 10 then I guess.

Good morning.

We're the Board of Equalization.

The board is comprised of five citizens of Albemarle County who are appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

We're an independent board.

Here's how the hearing will work.

You'll have 10 minutes to present your case.

The assessor will have seven minutes to present theirs, and then you'll have three minutes for your rebuttal.

During the hearing, we may stop to ask you an assessor questions.

Please note that per Virginia law, there is a presumption of correctness.

The burden of proof is on you as the applicant.

Before we begin, we'll be swearing in the witnesses.

If you've testified before, you don't have to worry about raising your right hand to the applicants.

Please raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony, both oral and documentary, which you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

This is application number 32, PID 14216, property owners Yimin and Hung Joo Woo.

Sorry, if I pictured that, hopefully that was right.

My husband and I are pitching a fair assessment for my house in Jamun's Castle, Crozet.

My husband and I built a ranch farm in Old Davidville in 2011.

We do not dispute my land value assessment.

However, we believe my home improvement is over assessed by current adjusted base rate, neighborhood adjust rate, or other factors.

I'm not comparing my house with recently sold houses.

It might be sold in a higher price than county assessment due to upgrades, renovations, or additional building structures before selling.

This is my oldest ranch house.

We are comparing my house with my adjacent neighboring houses.

House A, B, and C are my closest neighboring houses.

with several years assessment history.

House D appears to be located in Jamans Gap Road.

Its house size is similar to mine.

It was built in the same year as mine, 2011.

House C was also built in the same year, 2011, as my house.

The distinct difference that their builders were greatly

or Beedie versus mine was built C. You all know that houses built with grade A or B sold in higher price than house with grade C. They have better design, constructions using high quality materials.

For example, they use hard ducts and the mine use the soft ducts for HVAC.

My house is highlighted by a yellow box.

A, B, C, and D are marked by a red box or red circle.

Let us compare the current assessment per square foot between my house and house A, B, and C. This is my house, this is house A, house B, and house C. The current assessment per square foot of my house is close to house B, but higher than house A and C.

The blue bar represents the 2017 assessment and the green bar represents the 2023 assessment.

From 2016 to 2023, my house value has been increased by a whopping 69%.

while house A, B, and C have only been increased by 20%, 22%, and 30%.

My neighboring houses with grade A or B builders have less appreciation than my grade C house.

Let us compare annual home improvement assessment between house D

My house is orange bar and house D is green bar.

House D with B2 plus grid finished 2,496 square feet, basement 1,248 square feet,

with 576 square feet detached car brush.

My house is a C plus one grade, has a similar size as house D. Both houses were built in 2011.

The home improvement value in 2012 for house D was about one third higher than my house.

This reflected the true building cost at that time.

Magic things happened from 2016 to 2017.

My house was appreciated by 16%.

My house depreciated, not appreciated by 17%.

Look at the annual trend.

My house appreciated by $17,751 annually

although no upgrades or renovations were made.

While house D only appreciated by $9.09 annually, although it is located in a wealthy neighborhood and built by grade B2+.

Neighboring house A, B, C, D all have similar assessments favoring to their owners.

Since my house doesn't have the same treatment as my neighboring houses, we are appealing for fair treatment.

Fair assessment option one is to use my neighbor's current adjust base rate, which is 104.3, and the neighborhood adjust rate, which is 0.885 for my home improvement assessment.

My home improvement assessment would be

$96,608, which is $151,000 below my current assessment.

My current adjusted base rate and neighborhood adjust rate are much higher than my neighboring houses.

This unfairly pushes up my house assessment.

Their assessment option two is to apply the same appreciation rate of my neighboring houses.

The highest appreciation rate from 2016 to 2023 is 30% for house A and the lowest appreciation rate is 13% for house D.

My home improvement assessment should have been between $300,517 and $344,630.

Our conclusion, to follow the assessment uniformity rule based on community assessment on four of my neighboring houses.

My home improvement assessment is inflated at least $103,000 and likely $151,000.

So I have a question to everyone.

Thank you very much.

Any questions from the board?

who want to take up the share screens.

Yeah, stop sharing.

There are some of the differences, and I'll first start with the properties that are being used as comparisons.

There are some differences, and besides the gray, Birchwood Hill properties are in Old Trail.

The ones that are being referred to are in Upper Ballard, which is, they were right here, right?

Okay, so they're in the Upper Ballard neighborhood

which is a higher end homes in that neighborhood.

And we have the Crozet one is a neighborhood that catches a bunch of different pieces of the Crozet residential that is not actually part of a specific

Old Trail or Upper Ballard.

So that's the difference, that's one difference between some of these comparables that the African Hawaiian and their subject.

Also, besides the fact that they have different grades, the higher grades, they're two stories instead of one story, a two story generally, definitely generally has a lower price per square foot than a one story.

We have nine sales within this Crozet 1 neighborhood.

There's a range of properties that are in this group.

They range from D grade up to A minus 1.

so there's a variance in the prices, there's a variance in the grades, there's a variance in the relative location but the valuation of these properties is relatively tight and all nine of these have ratios that range from 91 to 116% and the majority of those

We did an inspection of the property.

We have the description of the property correct.

I was trying to figure out, looking at that one example, the one slide that was presented with their property going up and the other property going down and up,

I was trying, not knowing about that slide in advance, I would have figured out what was going on with that other property.

There are lots of reasons why an assessment on a specific property might change.

Could be that we did a review and you found there's something different after those first few years and lowered it and had nothing to do with the market.

Certainly there was no down market in 2016 to 2017, but there could have easily been an issue with

the neighborhood it was in or that parcel itself that caused that value to go down, not saying that values generally were going down today.

So as we've discussed before, the effect in different neighborhoods can vary when you're talking about changes and when you're talking about the amount of changes in the same year.

Well, let's, we're going to do that, I think it's directly to the board, and then I'll go back to you all.

Does the board have any questions of the assessor at this time?

Okay, now it goes back to you all.

My question is, my house is a blue box there.

Correct.

So most likely it's a green area.

high-end house, coaches the land from that area.

So my house is more compatible to the green area, not district Crozet 1.

My second question is, you say house D is kind of abnormal property, but unfortunately,

That statement is wrong.

This is across board for green area.

In 2016, the higher quality assessment, 2017, that decreased for all of four properties we mentioned.

It's not a specificity across the board.

I don't know what is the catastrophic events for them to make their value go down.

Well, let me, I just wanted to make a point before you, if you don't mind.

See, if you were put in the green area, their base rate for the land is 248,000, is that right?

That is correct.

$160,000.

One thing is different.

They all have public COG.

It will have a public COG connection and

I know but you can't just you can't you can't come and tell us I'm just again I'm just throwing it out there but you can't come in and argue yeah but you can't but if you're going to argue that we're using they're using the wrong values for land well they're just saying land is okay but use the res factor yes but you're saying use that then

your value you can't you can't pick and choose you see what I'm saying because if you come in and say we're looking at the whole the whole value of the property and so if you look at the 160 they put 240 they put you in the green your improvement value is going to go down based on that I'm assuming based on the res factor but then your land value would have

who've gone up a good amount, enough where it's gonna be maybe even more than what the value you have.

So I don't think you all are disagreeing.

You shouldn't be putting the green because you all have septic and well, you don't have public water, right?

Is that what you were saying?

Okay, so those houses are in old trail neighborhood.

They have like a children's playground,

They have a swimming pool, they have a golf club.

So they are in the wealthy neighborhood.

Of course, their land value are much higher than my house in Jammers Gap Road.

We do not have swimming pool.

We do not have children's playground.

We do not have public switch.

We do not have golf club, right?

That's why my land value is much lower than the houses

in Old Mill neighborhood.

I understand that.

Yeah, you know, I understand that's why.

And you're not questioning the land value.

I don't, we're not going to be questioning the land value.

But that's the, that's the only be the problem.

That's the only thing is when you're comparing these, your better comparison may be the one you all had one with Jarmon's Gap.

And we can look at that one a little bit closer because

I don't know if it was a sale but it was the assessment but when they're doing it and I'm not going to explain their job but the general when we're looking at it and all these numbers they threw out and you put the base rate of 885 they're looking at their our understanding is they're looking at it they're saying that the houses in that neighborhood the improvements yes they're

So, may I say something?

Yeah, please.

So, our disagreement is the current adjust rate and the neighborhood adjust rate

in Old Show neighborhood.

It's much lower than my house in Jammers Gap Road.

I hear you.

All I was- Better design, constructions, and better material.

Let me see.

Those two rates are much lower than my house.

I hear you.

All I was trying to do was simply explain why there may be a distinction between Old Trail and your neighborhood is because they're looking at it, they're too different in terms of when they sell or anything else, there's completely different neighborhoods for their purposes.

So they're looking, and you all can correct me if I'm wrong.

So what we have to do is we have to balance both the land and the improvements

in order to reach the sale prices of the properties.

So if we have land sales within that subdivision, we can't have a land value, land assessment rate that is off from those land sales.

Those land sales will help us determine the land part of it.

However, once we establish that land value, we still have to match the overall sales of improved properties.

So we have to adjust that the improvement modifier in order to match both the land value and the total value.

In this case with Upper Ballard, that causes what looks like a big difference

these two neighborhoods with 85% adjustment to the improvements, yet a much higher land value in the upper Ballard and 115% adjustment to the improvements and 160,000 land value.

So as Mr. Arsali was mentioning,

You can't just say, okay, my land's okay, but my building's too high because both of those are part of the same model.

Okay, keep one step back, okay?

Even you treat my land value as my neighbor, $200,000.

But if you knock down the property, it will be $150,000.

We agree.

You don't have the amenities that are in Upper Ballard or even Old Trail and therefore your land value is lower.

However, in the end,

We, you know, in the end, what the question is, the question is not how much of a change from year to year you get or over a number of years is 567, 600.

Is that the correct value?

567, 600,000.

Is that what this property would sell out?

If it is, then our assessment is correct.

If there's something that shows that

You could not sell your house for 567, 600,000.

That's what we need to show that the value's wrong.

But the analysis, I mean, I'm not gonna speak for the board.

They make their own decisions.

They're independent.

It's how much it could sell for in a specific- I've just said, we are not comparing the sale of house.

Before it was a sale,

to make a renovation.

Like my neighbor sells a house for the deck, changes a roof to add a solar panel, add additional structure.

Yeah, they almost reached the assessed value.

But I'm just living there.

We don't want to sell.

I doubt that is fair.

Marketed twice.

It is not.

So it's a basic fundamental question, regardless all is factor.

I think we understand your arguments.

Well, I do.

I'm looking at those two sales.

I'm just looking at last year.

And so we have, I can't remember which one was A and which one was B, but 7681, 7681 Birch Hill, Birchwood Hill Road, 7681.

We don't have to see information.

It's the top of the

on the two that they used as comparables down the bottom.

So the building assessment increased 25% from 396,000 to 495,000 last year.

So let's look at the Minecraft.

Yeah, okay, let's share.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry.

Okay, let me get an A.

Yeah, let's go to the bottom, yeah.

So how's A?

So you're including in your

Because we cannot compare the land value.

We do not have those amenities.

We do not have public sewage.

Okay.

So if your land, if your improvement value in 2022 was $420,000,

I'm looking at the assessment data.

$420,000.

It went up to $447,000.

So this is insignificant.

That's a 5% increase.

So I'm not quite sure.

I'm not following your numbers.

So from this graph,

The blue bar represents Tucson's 16th Home Improvement Assessment.

I'm talking about last year.

Let's look at it.

Yeah, we compare, this graph represents from

from 2016 to 2023.

So you did a jump from, you did the blue bar.

The orange bar is 2017 Home Improvement Assessment.

And the green bar is 2023.

So from 2017 to 2023.

through 18, 19, 20, 21, 20.

Okay, overall from 2016 to 2023 is 69%.

That's my home improvement assessment.

And house A from 2016 to 2023 is about 30%.

And house B, this house B from 2016 to 2023

Assessment to 2023 increased by 22%.

And this is for House C. From 2016 to 2023 only increased 20%.

This is all about home improvement assessment, not about the land value.

Yeah, we could put a improvement assessment for 2018, 2019, 2021.

We can put in, but you know, because it's too much data on the one slice.

So we just put three bars, okay, for 2016, 2017, and 2023.

So appreciative data, we are double there, at least.

So you look at the bar, you see from 2016 to 2017, it is a cross board for my neighbor.

Yeah, because we cannot compare land value.

We're not in their neighborhood.

You cannot compare just the home improvement value either.

You have to compare the total value of all the properties if they're improved.

You cannot take one part of that definitely if they're between different.

different assessing neighborhoods.

That's not what I'm talking about.

What I mean is that when I looked at your graph, I was trying to figure out why A, I think it was A, went down in assessment in one year and then came back up, but it didn't.

The improvement part of that equation went down

and then went back up.

But the value, as you can see on the screen here, from when it was built, 569, 594, it went up constantly from year to year total value.

Go to 2016.

We went up between 16 and 17 a lot on the land because we were having land sales.

Well, I think let's, we're running out of time.

So we're running out of time.

We don't have time.

So let's, we understand your point.

What we have to look at is we can't, I understand the frustration and you're looking at, you're looking at improvement versus improvement and you're seeing this percentage increase and you're frustrated by it.

I can hear that.

We can't look at it like that.

We gotta look at the total value, okay?

So if your value, your total value, as they're saying is $569,000 and change.

They're saying the total value of that property is 743,000.

So if you look at the percentage increase, I don't know what it is, but it's much less than that 69% that you're putting versus the 30 something, it's closer.

Your arguments, the percentage we can't, so that's not something, we do need to equalize, but we're equalizing with this year.

That's what we're looking at.

We're not looking at 2016 versus 2023.

So,

Just to give you a last chance to kind of, we understand your arguments there.

We will consider all those arguments, but just to give you kind of a last chance to, if you want to say anything else about it.

One is, why do you think the value of your house is not 560 something thousand dollars?

And if you have a specific reason for it, please feel free to share it this year as of January 1st, 2023.

And then if you, when you're talking about these other houses, the only thing I would just add is one, I don't, they're a different neighborhood.

It's tough for us to kind of compare the apples and oranges.

Is that, I mean, that house is being valued at $743,000.

So it's being valued a decent amount of almost $200,000 more than yours.

Do you think that this one should have been valued more, yours less?

I mean, that's where, and I'll give you just, again, we're out of time really, but if you want another minute or two just to explain why you think that your value is too high, that's what we can listen to and that's what we can

However,

The big difference is between cone improvement assessment.

We're not looking at, that's not our job to look at what happened in 22 or 21 or 20.

Maybe it was assessed too low, maybe it was assessed too high.

We're looking at 2023.

And why is it that 567-600 is too high?

That's what we need to know.

What is your argument as to why 567-600 is too high?

that's as your total value of your property.

Because that's the number that matters to us is the total value of the property.

If I could just add, you're looking, you have appealed this year's assessment.

The past several years are in pandemic.

We don't want to even meet people, right?

In the past three years, we would like to appeal, you know, in 2020, 2021st, but we were unable to do it.

Well, but I, you know, we've been here every year.

So, you know, you have appealed this year's assessment based on your documentation.

and so in looking at the comparables that you provided, the sales A and B, last year their building value increased approximately 25%.

Your building value increased approximately 5%.

If you look at one of them, went from 396,000

to $495,000 last year.

That's an increase of about 25%.

The other one that you use that's adjacent to your property increased from $476,000 to $587,000.

That's an increase of about 25%.

Your building value went from $420,000 to $447,000.

That's a $25,000 increase.

That is, what, a 6% or 7% increase

building value.

And so we can't, you know, I think your argument is very well presented.

I was very impressed by it, but you were appealing this year's assessment only.

We can't, you know, I understand your situation.

I understand your frustration and your position, but if we're looking at the data from 2022, your increase is substantially lower

and those other properties this past year.

Cool.

We are comparing house key, okay?

From 2016, 2017, their value can go down, depreciated by 17%.

Cool.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

If we, what time is it?

Is the next option here?

I am.

OK.

So let's go ahead.

You're gonna sit over there, won't they?

Thank you.

Well, I think you can even probably be added this year.

We'd love to have you.

You guys like real estate people?

So let me start with my spiel until our two other members come back.

So good morning and welcome.

We're the Board of Equalization.

The board is comprised of five citizens of Albemarle County who are appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

We're an independent board.

Here's how the hearing will work.

You will have 10 minutes to present your case.

This session will have seven minutes to present theirs.

And you'll have another three minutes for rebuttal.

During the hearing, we may stop to ask you and assess your questions.

Please note that per Virginia law, there is a

Before we begin, I'm going to swear in the witnesses from the Ascension Office.

I think everyone's been sworn in, so if you could just raise your right hand, swear you in.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony of the oral documentary which you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

OK.

We're waiting.

Had the GIS map on the front page?

Yes, I'll be referring to this.

I didn't bring slides or a computer.

That's a first for us.

That was the first for us.

I was involved in that last hearing.

Great, thank you, Jeff.

My name's Ron Wade.

My wife and I own a house at 1431 Trinity in Crozet.

We've been here for about four and a half years.

We moved here to retire.

I retired earlier this year.

Our house is, it's four and a half years old.

It's a four bedroom, three and a half bath house, 3,294 square feet.

It had an assessment for 2023 of 868,700, which I contested back earlier this year.

Using the sales approach, I sent some comps to the assessor

previous information that I sent in.

My understanding is based on a sales approach, most properties will sell based upon the size of the house, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, how much property and what the living area is per square foot.

You look on Zillow or you look at anything and price per square foot tends to be a pretty good measure of what a house will sell for.

So the four comps that I sent back in, I believe it was April, all rotated right around $235 per square foot.

Two places on Trinity, just essentially my neighbors, one on Clark Ridge, which is just around the corner, and one on Ravenstone, which is in the,

which is in the Park Ridge neighborhood.

Again, very consistent, about $235 per square foot.

My assessment was $868,000 in change.

I suggested that the house should be appraised at about $771,000 based upon

Bedroom size, lot size, the comparable comps, price per square foot, okay.

I got a letter back from the county in March saying we've assessed it, we've considered the pertinent information and we're not going to change anything.

That's why I'm here because I don't understand why we didn't change anything when I gave data that looked like it would be sufficient to establish sales price.

So I took a different tact

This time, the document that I sent along earlier this week, you'll notice in the GIS map, there are three properties that I outlined in detail, and then four properties that are also four-bedroom houses, again, in the exact neighborhood.

I heard some of the arguments earlier about land values and stuff like this.

The picture that I'm showing on the development here

is all comparable.

I mean, these are all the land values are about $185,000.

All the houses run from three to six bedrooms.

They're all 10 years old or less.

And so in this case, I looked at some properties.

I tried to find properties in this neighborhood that were as close to my property in terms of bedrooms, bathrooms, land size, when the house was built, et cetera.

And so let me go through those.

The first one, 160 Marcos Avenue, which is number one on the map.

the 2023 assessment $749,000 which is $111,000 assessment less than my house it's a four bedroom three and a half bath 3363 square feet virtually identical it's about mine's about 70 square foot smaller it's on that equal amount of acreage

It has a partially finished basement.

Mine's unfinished.

If you look in my basement, it's insulation on the walls.

It's two by fours.

There's no finishing in the basement at all.

It's a concrete floor.

This house is on a quiet cul-de-sac.

So is mine.

They back up to development, and when I mean that in your backyard, you look at the house across the street.

Some of the houses I'm going to show you here back up to open space, which real estate agents would generally say is a preferable thank you from your backyard.

So I think this is the best property in terms of what I'm seeing in assessments that the county assessed in 2023 to my property.

And so my question here becomes, why is mine assessed at $111,000 more?

Here's some other properties.

These are not as comparable in terms of exact specifications, but they're some of the best ones I could find.

So 768 Concho Lane built about the same time.

It's a five bedroom, four and a half bath, 4,494 square feet.

So mine's 1,200 square foot smaller.

It's on the same amount of acreage.

It has a fully finished basement.

It's on a quiet cul-de-sac, same thing.

Back to the partial open space, which is maybe preferable.

Its assessment's 48,600 less than my house.

1457 Trinity, which is essentially across the street, built about the same size, five bedroom, four and a half bath, 37, 32 square feet, half an acre, same thing, has a finished basement, quiet cul-de-sac, backs to development, assessment is $64,000 less than my property.

1420 Trinity, again, just essentially next door, built 2016, so it's a couple of years older, five bedroom, four and a half bath, 3,450 square feet,

Half an acre, same thing.

Has a finished basement.

Again, mine does not.

It's on a quiet cul-de-sac.

It backs to open space, the creek, which is desirable.

And assessment is $15,700 less than my house.

I show the subject property here.

I just put the date on here, 1431 Trinity, which is number five on the map.

Additionally, so those are the,

The properties that I looked at were as comparable as I can see to mine.

Many of them were larger than mine and assessed for less.

I found five additional properties in our development in the in the foothills crossing development that they show under additional information.

These are all four bedroom.

three and a half, three to five bathroom houses.

The livable square footage is within 100 or 200 square feet of my house.

They're on acreage that are all slightly larger than mine, but essentially half an acre.

And the assessments on these houses run from $139,000 to $178,000 less in assessment than my house for the 2023 assessment.

Thank you very much.

Any questions from the board of the site?

I will give one big reason why it should be assessed more than that.

$781,589 is what was paid five years ago for his house.

It is obviously the entire market has increased in the last five years.

So, that's that's the first indication that there's differences between the expectation of the value of this property and and what it's actually worth.

Um these other properties, I know that we've provided the sales within this neighborhood.

There's seven

and they were all the same grade as the property, all B plus two.

Now this neighborhood has, and I brought this up, so to show there'd be minus one graded homes and there'd be plus two graded homes.

They were built at different times and they were generally, I think the higher grades were built later, but

There's a big difference between those B minus ones and the B plus two houses.

And I know that what Mr. Wade had provided on his comp sheet, his original comp sheet, every one of those houses in comparison

were B minus one or B minus two, and then there was one B, but they were all inferior in quality to the subject property.

They varied in year built.

I thought these were the same properties that were originally presented, but they're not.

The very first one on the new sheet that was provided is a B minus one.

That would explain the difference.

They're all in the same, okay.

Put that in here.

Or in the list of comments.

But, you know, based on the description of the property, the square footage, the grade, we have and, you know, and that grade was

Proof of the grade was in the original sale price.

So back in 2018 when it sold, the grade was set or was confirmed at that point.

And sorry, I'm looking at different property.

And that helps us make sure and calibrate the grades that we have on the property.

And in the 55,000, that price included $55,000 in upgrades.

And that is typically the difference between the pluses and minuses when you talk about the big grades or any of the grades.

Just kind of touched on it just a little bit.

I have the same question.

So upgrades is definitely a part of that.

So if you're looking at a standard model, it might be a B.

If you strip it down, it would be a B minus or minus two.

If you add

and extras to it, a lot of extras it can go with.

Yes, exactly.

Depending on what the standard was.

Exactly.

Okay.

So those items are definitely sought after in the market and they produce a return when you sell the house in a, you know, excessive amounts of them don't give you as much return as, you know, a normal amount, but there's definitely levels of standard, you know, stripped down,

So one thing I noticed on your map when you're talking about grades, I believe there's a property at 1405 Trinity Way, it's sold for $975.

It's right there on the corner.

Grade B plus two right there on the corner, Trinity and Lee on that one.

That was in my original, $233 per square foot.

That's the same grade as my house, according to this.

I don't understand these different grades.

I've been in many of these houses and I can't tell the nickels where the difference you walk into one versus the other.

I mean, our upgrades were, we bought the house to retire in, so we didn't put carpet in the house just because it's different

We put cabinets in the house to cost more so that you don't have to replace and retain them after a few years.

We put better hardware on the doors so it wouldn't fall apart in the 15 or 20 years that we're going to live there.

My suspicion is real estate agent comes in, looks at any of these houses in the neighborhood and the difference between a B minus one and a B plus two

In this market, I certainly don't see that affecting sales price much at all.

The other thing that I'll mention, and I asked if there was somebody from the Whitehall District here, because I presume that none of you live out in Crozet.

So I don't know if you know what's going on in development in Crozet, but in our neighborhood, if you put the map back up there, kind of blow it up a little bit,

just the general map.

Yeah, kind of sink it down so we can kind of see what's going on a little bit more there.

So you see the neighborhood right there.

So this is interesting.

So you get rid of all the neighborhood areas.

So we're right here, right?

So this is Blue Hill Cross.

This is my neighborhood right there, okay?

This has been, we moved here four and a half years ago.

This has all been built since we moved here.

and there are a couple of hundred high-density units going in here.

Here at the end of Eastern, there's a couple of hundred high-density units that are proposed here that the county supervisors are looking at and here out on Park Bridge, there's a high-density unit that's here.

So what's happening is Park Ridge Drive has become a major traffic congestion area

And again, I mentioned I'm president of the Homeowners Association here, so I talked to a lot of people.

I hear a number of people along Park Ridge particularly, but it happens on Leon and Cardinal Crest and some of these others.

congested here and down through downtown Crozet and then out at the 240-250 intersection.

They're saying once their kids graduate from high school, they're going to move.

They're going to move out of this because of the high density that's being built in a neighborhood that four years ago, it wasn't there.

I don't know what that's gonna do long-term in terms of sale property values, but I can tell you that there's a house across the street, 1462 Trinity.

You can pull that up.

It's right across the street, a few houses down.

It was listed for 875 and it's under contract.

It's a six bedroom, seven bath, 5,750, 44 square foot house.

six bedroom, seven bath.

It's across the street, about three houses down, listed for 875.

And so my suspicion is that the values of property, and again, when I pulled the comps last year, including that one on the corner, that was a B plus two for 975, where the peak of the market, bottom of interest rates.

So the comps that I'm looking at in mid-2022 are about as high as property values are going to get in this year or next year likely.

That's kind of what I have.

I've presented at least more than 10 properties, four-bedroom houses in our neighborhood, thinking about what are these houses going to sell for.

if they sell, if people put them on the market.

And it looks like my house is appraised at $80,000, $90,000 more than everybody else's house there.

I have a nice house, so does everybody else.

Like I said, I don't know how to grade the house.

Is there something better than B plus two?

I mean, I've certainly been in houses that are a lot fancier than mine with marble.

So is B plus two like as high as it goes?

Okay.

And that's why I'm looking at 2023 evaluation.

And you have the 22 sales.

There's a couple of sales that you have and the assessor has.

So those are good to look at.

There are B plus twos as well.

So 1405, you mentioned 1405 training, which I think was the one.

Horner.

Just note, I think you're looking at price per square footage with the finished basement.

So you can't really take the... And in my calculation, I valued the 1115 square foot finished basement at 669 square feet, which

to 60% of that living space, which is a commonly used metric in real estate sales.

So I didn't include the full 1,115.

And that's true with the other ones with the finished maintenance.

The same thing at 1457 Trinity had the same thing.

That's right.

I only included 60% of the finished

So what we'll do, if you have nothing further to add, this is all really helpful.

We really appreciate it.

We'll kind of go through it all and see if there's any discrepancies.

So we don't get an answer today.

I don't know, because of the timing and because we're taking some.

So we had 16 hearings yesterday.

We have 16 today.

We're having every half an hour.

There's a lot of appeals today.

We probably will not, I don't know what the timing is.

We have 10 minutes until the next one.

It takes us a bit longer than that to deliberate.

So what we'll likely do is, there will be a recording of this.

You're welcome to go back and watch it.

But what we will do, you will have a decision within the next two weeks.

I don't know when they post the recordings.

If you want to find out sooner than that, you're welcome to.

But that's pretty much it.

I can leave it with you.

We thank you for your time.

We will review it.

I mean, is there going to be- Probably not.

So you will get either we're going to reduce it or not.

You're going to get the numbers.

But again, like I said, you're welcome to see the recording and see what deliberations we did make to the extent we

Well, and we'll go through the properties and go through your comps and see if it was appropriate or not.

That's really what we do.

Your volunteers, I thank you for that.

I'm a volunteer myself.

and I just think, you know, I just presented information that I think is pertinent in terms of, you know.

A very good presentation.

No, we appreciate the presentation.

It's very well done and we will definitely consider all of this.

I won't waste any more of your time.

You're good.

Yeah, not a waste of time.

Thank you, Mr. Warner.

Let's see what time it is.

Okay, should we do all want to discuss this one or you want to discuss the last one first?

Okay, so the question with

So these are the two comps.

I'm curious about the same, but the same Marcus.

So 160 Sam Marcus was the first one he gave.

It's much less, but that's the B minus one.

Do you have the, what was that?

What did that sell for in you?

It was in 21, so I'm assuming a little higher than they were, but.

B minus one, and what did it add to cell four?

Yeah, I knew.

In 22, it's still number six.

Okay, so that was substantially less, or 21, looks like, right?

It was built.

Oh, January 22 is the entry date, but.

Still in 21.

Okay.

So that's where a lot of that's coming in.

So 1457 Trinity and 1405 Trinity, I think are the closest ones, but those actually sold.

One for 850, one for 975.

They sold for quite a bit more than the assessed value on those.

Same lots.

Those are the ones that have the big finished basements.

The only question is, are we accounting properly for that?

But again, they've sold for more.

I think a big distinction was the grade.

Yeah.

Well, one thing that he didn't consider that he didn't say is, and it's what I consider in this neighborhood especially, most of these homes are Stanley Martin.

Stanley Martin builds a nice home.

but he had a custom builder, Beverly Green, I think, built his house.

That's what, that's another distinction between the B minuses and B pluses.

When you have Stanley Martin, Craig, Beverly Green, now you have Greenwood builders, you know, you can't see like a two by four versus two by six exterior wall, that kind of stuff you can't see standing at the street, obviously.

So that's how we capture that value by opening that green.

You know, like he said, he couldn't see, he couldn't tell the difference between a B minus two or B plus two.

Yes, thank you, John.

Yeah, there's more to it than just upgrades.

Yeah, see, that's that.

I knew it, and I didn't bring it.

But I mean, you get into these hiring custom builders,

They add a lot of stuff that you don't see.

Granted, he bought $55,000 worth of grades that he could see, but there's also evergreen building.

Yeah, so $606,000 to $780,000 he paid, and the difference is less than that.

The sale price, that tells you that's probably a basic Stanley Martin home with entry level finishes.

Do we have a motion?

I make the motion to affirm.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

On to our next hearing.

Mr. Masterson, you can please come have a seat.

Good afternoon.

Good.

Usually put something here for the plaintiff.

Okay, so here's, I had to bring my own copies because even though the sets were much more taxes age, the County of Albemarle paying for the copy paper, I guess.

It's just the letter, but that's not for the board.

Before you start, let me do the introduction and the swearing in, and then we'll go from there.

Good morning and welcome.

We are the Board of Equalization.

The Board is comprised of five citizens of Albemarle County.

We're appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

We are an independent board.

Here's how the hearing will work.

You will have 10 minutes to present your case.

The assessor will have seven minutes to present theirs.

You will have another three minutes for rebuttal.

During the hearing, we may stop to ask you any assessor questions.

Please note the provision

So the burden of proof is on the applicant.

The burden of proof of what?

That the assessment is incorrect.

So per Virginia law, there's a presumption of correctness.

So we are presuming that what they provided is correct, unless you prove otherwise.

That's the law we have to follow.

So I will start with swearing in the witnesses.

So if you can please raise your right hand.

You saw me swear or affirm the testimony, but oral and documentary which you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And the assessor has previously sworn in, so didn't raise their right hand.

Yeah, so what's your track record on increases, affirming, or decreasing?

Because you're charged with, that is right, from the state, saying that you have

It's not in that order.

So we had 16 yesterday was our first day today is that you're welcome to go back and watch the tape and see what we do, what we we're trying to do, what's right.

At the end of the day, like I said, we are an independent board.

You're not part of the Assessor's Office.

We're all volunteers, even though we do, as I've been corrected earlier, we do get a $45 a day stipend.

So we're making the good money.

So we are trying our best.

We are trying our best to make sure that your assessment is correct.

And so that's what we do.

Do we increase assessments?

No, we haven't done that.

We can.

We have the right to.

Have we ever done that since I've been on the board?

No.

OK, so my main point is that

Over the last two years, especially last year, there's an overly exuberant property assessment increase that I'm not seeing in terms of sales around my property.

When they came out here and looked at my property, she told me the average of Albemarle County was 13.1%, okay?

That goes from everywhere.

You know, North Garden, Scottsville, all that kind of stuff.

But, so mine is 26%, okay?

I cannot justify it for the sales I'm seeing around my house and what Pentagon Federal Credit Union, my mortgage lender has provided me, okay?

and if you go to the uniformity of properties that the Pentagon used, their assessment for my property was at the slice of time that I took it was when I received this letter from the county saying they're gonna increase my property tax by 30%, 28.1% over two years worth $190,000 in the two years.

that the home value, most likely home value is 172, which is a lot less than $650, $800, okay?

And the bank has to put their money where they think it will return in the value prop.

They're not gonna lend money $680,000 on the assessed value of their assessment of 572.

So I think this assessment is for this particular house,

is arbitrary and overly exuberant.

And then I wanna bring out the other points that I think is very important.

As a property owner in this county since 2003, when I moved here, when I was assigned here in the military, I'm now a foundational investment in Almar County.

And that foundational investment in property taxes, I should get some return.

Hey, my property is adjacent to Baker Butler Elementary School.

Baker Butler Elementary School has city water, city sewer.

I'm an adjacent property, doesn't have it.