Board of Equalization Meeting   6/24/2024

Okay, so I'll call to order the meeting of the Board of Equalization, June 24, 2024.

The first matter on our schedule is the discussion of the proposed revisions to the Board of Equalization rules of procedure.

These were distributed by Mr. Lynch on May 23, 2024, in accordance with the time limits applicable to

the distribution of those materials.

So the chief revision being proposed by the Assessor's Office is the addition of paragraph five, preparation for hearings, which would permit the, or require as a condition for the appeal, the applicant to permit an inspection by the Assessor's Office.

And the Assessor, as part of this proposal will direct

Staff to conduct an inspection if one has not already been completed in that tax year for another reason.

So it could represent those two changes here.

One is that there would be an inspection each year for each appeal.

And two, that the appellant would not need to consent to the inspection.

The applicant would have to allow it.

And those are the only changes, just some other numbering revisions for paragraphs

5 through 9, now 6 through 10.

I'm not inclined to make it a requirement for the appeal.

I think you should make it clear to them that it could impact their arguments if they're not allowed.

But I just don't, that's just my opinion.

I think if you're gonna appeal, everybody should be treated the same way and should have an inspection if it's warranted.

I guess as a reminder of the conversation we had about this the last time it was discussed under Virginia Code section 58.1-3379 subpart F, the Board of Equalization has the ability to go upon and inspect any real estate subject to adjustment.

And that would remain in place regardless of what we do with our bylaws.

I think that's the question here.

I'm asking that it mean they can't, that you won't accept the appeal.

Yeah, I mean, we're saying you're asking if they don't allow an inspection inside the property, they're not allowed to do an appeal.

We don't accept their appeal.

Correct.

We hear it.

Correct.

They kind of don't right now.

That is correct.

You can ask.

Yes.

That is correct.

So that's kind of the point of this.

If we put it in the rules of procedure, then that creates the rule that they would have to have an inspection.

Well, actually, we had one

last year, the year before, who didn't let us on the property at all.

I just think that if they decide not to allow you to fully inspect it, it's a, I mean, frankly, it's a detriment to their argument.

And I think that's enough of a, I think that's enough, you know, that's just my, I mean,

I don't think it should preclude them from making an argument that they're overtaxed.

And it's going to hurt their argument if they don't.

So that's their choice.

I don't feel like we should force, you can't appeal it at all if you don't.

I mean, it's going to affect their argument if they do not let you in.

Peter, I can't recall if we discussed this last time, but are you aware of any other jurisdiction in the Commonwealth that requires an inspection as a condition of the appeal to a Board of Equalization?

I'm not aware.

I haven't asked other jurisdictions.

So I stated my position on the record last time, which is just that I'm afraid this would chill, you know, viable appeals for people who may not want someone in their property for any reason.

but I guess I'll add to that is I'm not sure that we have the authority to condition an appeal on that consent.

The 58.1 3380 says taxpayer or local authorities may apply for equalization.

Any taxpayer may apply to the Board of Equalization for the adjustment to fair market value.

I don't think that, you know,

We don't have a legal opinion on that.

And my reading of it is not dispositive.

But that would be the type of question that I would like to ask an attorney for the Board of Equalization probably before signing off on.

And even if the opinion was that we were allowed to do it, I would still vote against it for the reason that I stated.

And I'll wind up there.

Does anyone else have a comment or further deliberation?

Peter, is your office, do you like this?

Oh yeah, this is, yes.

And so the reason why my office wants this is because we often get arguments about just very specific parts of a value of a property.

and that's only one aspect of it.

The other aspect is it's very easy to show because the alternative sometimes is the applicant will show pictures of different pieces of the inside of the house and that can be very misleading where you can show one thing or a couple of things that might be a negative but you're not seeing the overall quality or overall condition of the house.

it makes it very difficult to go by that type of, you know, when that is all that's submitted or allowed.

So yeah, this is instigated by me because we feel that we get the best information when this happens.

So, you know, so if you guys agree with that, that's fine.

If you are on the other side of that, that's fine too.

I mean, with the more freedom or,

lack of intrusiveness or whatever you want to call that other side.

So that's one kind of decision that you guys just need to make on whether to change this or not.

The other part is quite often, more often than the inspection part of it, the applicant will try to narrow the focus of what the only thing they're appealing.

I'm only appealing the land or I'm only appealing this garage or something very specific.

And we don't look at a property

and say, okay, a la carte, let's see if the value of this garage is correct and ignore everything else.

So really what we're after is every time is a holistic value of the property.

Yes, we do that automatically as soon as we get the application and quite often we have access because the applicant wants us to see

what they're complaining about, what they're saying is causing their value to be lower.

So for the most part, we do get that access.

It's just those few that don't, that we're asking for.

I'd say it's pretty small, Billy.

Yeah, it's pretty small percentage.

So, and kind of it comes down to us as fairness, you know, with the majority of people are allowing it, then a few are not.

And it's usually, we believe, in a case where they're trying to just push a specific point.

Okay.

That is correct.

Or amend it to some different thing.

I would only, I would say, you did ask one question about the reputation of the state law.

It's pretty open.

It's like you may make an application.

It doesn't say you may make an application with these conditions.

It says you may make an application.

I guess the question is, can each locality

have reasonable regulations and rules regarding this.

I just don't think this is reasonable, but I'm happy to wait until we get an answer.

There's not a time, critical time period on this, right?

I move we table this

And can I add to that?

Can you find out if any of your fellow assessors have any type of regulation like this?

I mean, is there

I will see what I can find out.

Is there a second for Mr.

Second.

All in favor?

All against?

Okay, motion passes.

I realize that at the outset, sorry, first time doing this, I forgot to note that there is a quorum

Available all five members are present in person and then review the approval of agenda.

The agenda for today covered the consideration of the assessor's request for revision to the Board of Equalization Rules of Procedure to allow inspections, which we've just decided.

And there will be review and approval of minutes from our organizational meeting either at the end of this meeting or at our next meeting.

No reports of officers and BOE members, I believe.

Was there any unfinished business from the previous hearing?

I think the only other matter that we had decided on was that we would send the letter requesting legal representation.

So I have a copy of the letter.

and I think I should, I'll print it or distribute it during the break for review and approval if that works.

Okay, new business.

Good morning.

We are the Board of Equalization.

There's 30 minutes allocated to your appeal.

Begin with the presentation of your case.

You'll have 10 minutes, followed by a seven-minute presentation by the county assessor or visitor or delegate, staff member, and then there will be a three-minute rebuttal period, and that leaves 10 minutes for consideration or deliberation regarding the case.

We had a little flexibility in those time periods, but try to be cognizant of the time.

Mike?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes.

Thank you for catching that.

I'm going to swear you in before you begin your testimony.

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

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, folks, for asking me here to be involved and

I had the opportunity and the pleasure to come to this event last year where I got some relief from about my very question.

And so after looking through the land extensively, I decided, hey, there might be some other things here that they could see and could reduce that even further.

My name is Don Richardson.

I've been in Charlottesville with the exception of four years from the Air Force since I started as an undergraduate in 1954.

I've lived on the same property out near Whitehall for over 50 years and I'm a retired physician here in Charlottesville and now run a beef cattle farm.

I found that property and that's why I stayed in Charlottesville

It was a rundown place that had three old houses on it that were tearing them down and even squatters were sitting in them.

Even using upstairs bedroom for bathroom or whatever, this place was horrendous.

But over the period of years, we've done a lot of improvements to make it better.

I've talked extensively to Jim Faulkner of McLean Faulkner Realty, whom I've known for a long time, also Mike Guthrie and his people who do the land sales for

and the former Realtor, Realty and whatever, and Russ Stevens of Stevens Realty.

They all specialize in land sales and I've talked with them last year before this meeting and I've talked to them again this year, all three of them, and I've gotten a good bit of information from them coming from Mr. Faulconer who has 50 years of experience in land sales.

as much as anybody around.

I want to start off by talking about the access road.

People don't ordinarily talk about that, but I live on Clark Road.

And for those of you folks who don't know, Clark Road is a 3.5 mile dirt and gravel road.

It's got signs on it that says 15 miles per hour.

It's a very narrow and also crooked dirt gravel road.

It has

It's impossible in many areas to pass a school bus or a truck on that.

You might have to back up a sixteenth of a mile or so for somebody to get off on a driveway in order to get through it.

It's really slick when you get some ice and snow on it, you can fall off.

One mile of the 3.5 miles has a big drop off down to the Mormons River and there are

is not one guardrail anywhere.

Some of the drop-offs are as far as 70 feet down.

And if you slip off that thing, the saplings won't keep it from going all the way down.

This is the most dangerous road in Albemarle County by far.

I don't think it's had any question about it.

It is very, very difficult to pass or do anything.

It's just so narrow a part of the way.

So people don't like that.

People don't like to drive in there, especially developers don't want to bring, and folks with big fancy new cars coming down, it's so dusty in the summertime that not only does the car get covered with dust, but also the filters inside get so covered that it's not a pleasant thing.

And that diminishes the property, I think.

and in the presentation I hope you folks have seen, I had a few pictures of the driveway of Clark Road.

I want to talk very briefly about McLean Faulkner's evaluation of the property.

There are three properties on either side of us, very close by, often owned by Clark families that have good road frontage and all.

We are a family subdivision.

We have a right-of-way, a 20-foot right-of-way only, nearly a quarter of a mile to get from Clark Road to get into where our farm exists.

I've tried to help get it paved and whatever, but the owner, the other part, Hugh Clark Jr., Buddy Clark, he doesn't want it paved.

He doesn't want any people to drive fast on it.

I don't know if you can put vehicles up or put the houses up there with a 20 foot right of way anyway.

I thought it had to be maybe 30 feet, but our driveway, our right of way,

in one place is 15 degrees steep.

It's very difficult.

It's a gravel thing.

When a great big rain comes, the gravel comes down.

There's no way for the water to go off either side of the road.

So the road is where all the drainage goes.

And when we get a big rainstorm or something, the gravel washes off, it gets more rudded and it's very, very

difficult.

Mr. Clark and myself have to maintain the road, but people that are going to put a house up there or something, they don't want to have to be part of building the road back up after every rainstorm because it's very difficult.

Mr. Faulkner has got the value per acre of all the three adjacent lands, adjacent people that do have access

They have, I'm sorry, division rights.

We don't have, I don't have any division rights at all.

I can't get them because of the family subdivision.

And Mr. Faulkner says for certain that the neighboring properties that have division rights, that always enhances the value of the property.

He says that Dunrovin Farms should be valued at no more than 40% of these neighboring property values due to the lack of road frontage, no division rights, the impossible driveway, and topography.

40%, he says, of the back part of our property is woodland and

Also critical slopes, they're also I think was in your packet was one that Ross Stevens put up for me to show what the critical slopes are, how it's almost unusable property.

He also found that, he found the only, nobody, none of these realtors could find a real true

comparable because they've not found one that doesn't have any road frontage that just has a driveway, not found any other property that's been sold recently or bought or whatever to get it into value of what that is.

But my contention is, because we don't have those in Mr. Faulkner's too, that he says that the, in conclusion, my opinion is the Dunrobin farmland

is valued too high at $8,688 per acre and should be closer to $5,000 to $6,000 per acre maximum value.

Then, let's see, the last year when I came in, Mr. Lynch was very,

Kind, and led the conference and such.

But when he talked about comparables, we couldn't find any true comparables.

He didn't have it.

He listed it for where we are, but didn't have true comparables because we don't have any possibility

of selling property, we can give to two acres to somebody in the immediate family with that family subdivision, but we can't sell the land at all to somebody else, no matter how much they wanted to come in there to build a house on a few acres.

We cannot sell it.

You have, if developers came in to do it, he's got that 5%

I forget the word of the phrase.

Five percent.

Oh, shoot.

When you have to take you have to pay for if you have in this family subdivision, you would have to pull back to get the taxes.

You'd have to pay five years of taxes if you were to buy that land before you could even start to develop.

I just couldn't think of the word right and I don't use it very often.

But also in our place, if this, a developer might want to use it, if it were five miles from Charlottesville and difficult,

to get to, but still five miles from Charlottesville, a developer can do anything with it.

But getting 12 miles from Charlottesville, like this farm is,

With this terrible access road and with the terrible driveway that's impossible and with the family subdivision when you can't sell it anyway, it makes it almost impossible for a developer to say, hey, I want to buy some of this and do it.

It's just not economically feasible in any way, shape or form.

And that's what makes the family subdivision property so unique.

We

Can't sell it for stuff.

People don't want it.

And you can't do it legally.

And so that is something that I think everybody needs to take into consideration.

We don't have any division rights at all.

And the three, and Peter last year mentioned that the

three modest quote-unquote old houses that we have which we fixed up some have they're from 65 to 130 years old one of them has only wood stoves for heating in the winter time at all but they are each on 21 acres I don't understand this I'm sure you folks do but

Each of these old houses that were there when I bought the place has a 21 acre little circle around it on the land.

And I was told that it's valued at 20% lower than the rest of the farmland because you can't sell it.

It's got that old house on it.

It got 21 acres around it.

but is valued at 20% less.

And Jim Faulkner says that that should be 50 to 60% lower because you can't sell it.

You can't do anything with it.

It's in the middle of the regular farmland.

And he's saying that that shouldn't be 20% lower than the rest of the farm, but should be 50 to 60% lower.

Let's see.

That's all I would have.

Thank you, folks, very much.

I will say that if you ever want an experience someday, come visit Clark Road one time.

Just come and visit Clark Road one time.

You drive down that road.

And whoa, most people, if they got a really good car, will never do it again.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you Mr. Mayo.

So this property we're aware has some access, you know, it is not premium access off of a paved road.

We understand that and we have adjusted the property for access.

Some of the things that Dr. Richardson was talking about, I'm not quite sure how exactly that would work because my understanding of family subdivisions, and these are things that obviously our community development department would

Be the specialists about but my understanding of family subdivisions are that you can subdivide for a family member that family member has to Retain it for a number of years and then it can be sold to anybody else.

So it's not a restriction forever It's a restriction for a couple of years two to four and I'm not sure exactly how many I don't

I'm not sure where the 21 acres is coming from that support these three houses, because these three houses have been there for a long time.

They have a right to be there, and typically every property that existed back in 1981, I believe it was, 80 to 82, somewhere in that time period, was given five development rights.

If there was existing houses on the property, I believe they would have covered one of those development rights and would be able to be subdivided off.

Again, these are kind of some of the rules that CDD would have to explain or basically they'd have to get a plan submitted to them and then they would approve it or say why they can't approve it.

But it's not as clear cut as there's a 21 acre assigned parcel to each one of these houses because typically there's not.

We assess a two acre home site for each house, typically sometimes one.

And there is value in the fact that there are three existing houses sitting on this property.

and we adjust those for access because of the situation.

And we also, Dr. Richardson mentioned the steep slope in the back of the property and I can show you on the map so you can see this better.

He's referring to, and I'll put the steep slope layer on,

or the critical slope layer on.

So this whole back part, the wooded area is critical slope.

And we reduce the value of that part by 50% on top of other adjustments for the property.

So we're taking into account, just like all of these other surrounding properties that have that critical slope, we're adjusting for that critical slope.

And the majority of the value is in basically the flatter farmland.

that you see in the you know that's agricultural land here.

and you also see that there are a number of structures and homes in this area.

What I also don't know is if some of these other cutouts were some actual family subdivisions that were created from the original five development rights that were assigned to the property back in the 80s.

We don't have readily the history of the development of the properties

on any of the properties in the county.

But one thing we don't do is if we're looking at this property, we don't know because we don't know the development potential of every property without community development doing a detailed deed research of each one.

We don't know if this property has development rights or the property next door or other properties that have sold have development rights.

We treat them and assess them all based on what is currently going on.

Basically every property has the ability to build a house.

And that's the basis of every one of our assessments, unless they have more than one house currently existing, in which case, obviously there was the right to have that additional house or more houses, and we will have a home site assigned to each of those additional houses.

But without there being extra homes,

We aren't assigning an extra or additional value for a home site unless there's one existing.

John Stevens is here.

He's the appraiser who visited the property.

I just wanted to see if John had anything to add.

I know he had taken a video of the road, the access there, but do you have any information to add about the

The only thing I will add is Dr. Richardson kind of played it as that area is really undesirable.

And I've had four houses in the last year, year and a half be built on Clark or off of Clark, anywhere from quarter of a million to over a million dollar homes.

So yeah, Clark Road is a country dirt road, but it doesn't,

I don't think it detracts away from the value of anything on Clark Road.

That's my opinion.

And we do have a video of his access off of Clark back to his property.

Again, it's a gravel drive, but it's well-maintained by the Clarks and Mr. Richardson.

That's all I have.

Can you zoom out a little more on this?

Oh, absolutely.

where I can see Clark Road.

Oh, to Clark Road, certainly.

There's Clark right there.

I can get rid of the property lines here so we can, that's good.

Okay, now I have three minutes.

Just to clarify,

You've got, I'm looking at the assessment here.

You've got one building and then extra features and then outbuildings on the assessment.

Yeah, 273, 900 is the total value of all three of the buildings.

Correct.

So the 5,000 is extra features that are within those three buildings and the outbuildings are other buildings like agricultural buildings.

Got it.

And then the alternate land value is this.

Correct.

And then the additional, the land use value for the additional land that's qualified for land use.

Right.

And then in the 1.137, you included a reduction of 50% for, it looks like it looks around 20, 22, 25% of the acreage up there in the woods.

It was, I believe it's 89 acres.

or it's maybe 69.

I'm getting my numbers mixed up here.

So next.

Well, it's probably at 69.38 acres.

Yeah.

The 69 point something acres is essentially 70 acres and 70 acres is about 50% of the 143 on the farm total now.

So we're talking about approximately 50%, just a hair under that.

Yes, we do.

My wife and I have four adult children and every one of them has a house on the farm

that has been put there in the last 20 years.

The three old houses that we talk about are just what they are.

But I don't know why Mr. Faulkner said that those

that the 20 acres, or 21 acres per old house, that there was a little line around one of the maps that he had, and he said that those 21 acres around each of the old houses was valued at 20% less than the rest of the farmland.

No, it's in the letter here.

We could find out about that.

But anyway, I just wanted to clarify those things.

And I still think that the access that I think that it's from a practical standpoint, somebody that wants to put a house or

on that property and wants to drive through that driveway and be responsible for refixing the road in the driveway every time there's a big rainstorm and helping to pay for it.

No sir, they're all on the same, this is all one parcel with three homes on it.

And I can confirm that, you know, when we have multiple parcels or multiple houses on a single parcel, the first home site

has a certain value based on its neighborhood or market area.

The additional home sites have a 20% reduction.

So the 20% reduction sounds, that's probably where that's coming from.

It's just the number of acres that I don't believe is correct.

Yeah, I thought it was two acres.

For a resident.

So Mr. Richardson, your improvements that you've requested an improvement value of $352,800.

By my calculation, that would actually be an increase in the value of the improvements.

I'm sorry, my maturity, I don't hear quite as well as I did.

Could you say that again, please?

So you've requested on your application that the improvements be assessed at $352,800.

Just adding up the 273,900 for buildings, 5,000 for extra features, and 70,500 for outbuildings.

I got 349,400.

The request here would actually be to raise the valuation of your improvements by $3,400.

Do you really want the board to do that today?

No, I do want to reassess and that's one of the reasons that I came here and I'm sorry that I'm not familiar with

Mr. Richardson, I understood your appeal to be requesting that we lower the assessment of your property.

OK, so you have requested that we raise the assessment of your improvements.

Raise the improvement.

I apologize.

I haven't studied that well in the last week at all.

OK.

That's OK.

My intent was only to show the reasons why I thought the entire property was overvalued.

And I think I explained those reasonably well.

And I'll leave it up to you.

Okay, gentlemen, make a decision.

Okay, thank you, sir.

One question of the doctor.

Do you know if there's been any effort to pave or guardrail Clark Road to make it safer?

Yes, we've offered it, but there's some things that just travel very slowly.

And that's a tertiary road.

I didn't mention the fact that in the wintertime when it does snow and ice and whatever is on it, that is impossible road to go on.

plus the snowplows take care of the interstates.

They take care of the primary roads.

They take care of the secondary roads.

This is a tertiary road.

They almost never get to.

And so the people that live up there can't get out at all for two or three or six days.

That's just part and parcel of it.

Yes, we ought to have guardrails.

Yes, we ought to have

All kinds of things, improvements on that thing.

And to me, it's stupid not to have guardrails.

When you see one of the pictures I had on there, you can look right down, 70 feet down through there where Morans River is.

And if you slip off that road, or you come around anywhere close to it, and there are two cars going to pass, you might force somebody who is not a good driver, or understandable, to move a little bit further over toward the road.

Okay, I will do that.

Okay, I just have one question.

You've already carved off, you've already carved off from your original purchase 50 years ago, four parcels?

Right.

Yeah, we have, we've cut out four different,

So you've done four probably of the five by right development.

Yes.

Yeah, we we build a new house for ourself.

We gave one of our four children our old house and we built a new one on that.

Yeah, OK, so I think

You've maximized your development rights.

I think is the point.

Right.

Zero development rights.

I think that's a reasonable assumption.

All right.

I wasn't clear on that.

So thank you for your presentation, Dr. Richardson.

Thank you, doctor.

Any further

I will say Don is a good friend of mine.

And not that it has any bearing on this, but he raises some of the top her for genetics in the world.

I have been to the farm many times and walked the farm looking at cattle and what he says about Clark Road and his driveway is correct.

That much I do know from firsthand experience.

And the other thing I would say is, and I'm sure this happens many times, but it's a one of a kind property.

I mean, to try to find an exact comp to it would be impossible.

So I had a question for the Assessor's Office about the access adjustment.

I saw that comparable number two was adjusted by 20% because the driveway is not maintained.

It goes through the middle of the field.

Subject has a 10% adjustment for access.

And then comparable number three had a 20% access adjustment.

You know, given that this is a gravel and dirt road that, you know, is in the

kind of the, not the flood area, but like the washout area.

So we actually, you are correct.

We have a 10% adjustment on the first home site for access.

But we have a 20% adjustment on the second and the third home sites.

So no, I'm not married to that 10%, obviously.

And based on some of the other properties that have a 20% for a similar reason.

Some of these things are, you know,

You're not gonna find comparables that tell you exactly how much an access adjustment is worth.

So yeah, it would be appropriate to have a 20 on all three, the same adjustment on all three at least.

That would make sense to me since, you know, part of it is related to the access road and then the driveway.

I would go along with that 10% also, making it equal to the others.

And the comment that Mr. Mitchell pointed out about the five properties already being subdivided, that makes more sense now if somebody were looking at subdividing those existing homes on the property out, they would have to do it with 21 acre lots.

However, our valuation really only, it doesn't really matter if it encompasses a two acre home site or 21 acres, the additional 19 acres would be valued the same way as additional land.

It would, in the case of the access for the home site, if you were to adjust the additional land above the approximately six acres, then that wouldn't affect his immediate taxes.

I would say I thought the comps that the assessor provided were pretty tight to the parameters of the project.

They were very close geographically and I think the explanation for the

the value per acre in light of the development rights that did exist and now have gone and I guess could exist again with 21 acre parcels.

It didn't seem out of line to me.

I also thought the assessor's response to the McLean-Valkiner letter made me believe that those comparables were not very good.

Different side of the county, no development rights as one example.

So,

I agree with that.

What would be the effect of

I did.

So we are looking at, just based on making that first home site 20% reduction for access, the total land value would go to 1,127,300.

And it's currently $1,137,000.

Is there a motion?

I have no desire to change it.

Yeah, I don't think he carried a burden on that anyway.

There's no evidence in here about that.

Yeah.

It's all about land.

Yeah.

Okay.

Change the land value to $1,127,300.

All in favor?

Okay, motion carries.

I have a question.

Okay.

So generally, I mean, we typically, when we discuss these things, we come up with a pretty good, you know, basis of making a change.

If you were to decide, you know, I just think you should lower this 50% and I have really no support for that.

Next year, we're going to reevaluate it and come up with what we think it should be.

But in a case where we all agree that this is an appropriate adjustment, that's something we'll do going forward.

Now there can be some differences to that.

You guys will agree to a value and we'll find this in another hearing on another day.

based on setting some adjustments like this, but the value will change because the base value, the base rates that we're using will go up over time, but the adjustments will remain the same.

We don't have another,

appeal until 930.

Should we take a break?

Okay.

It'd be great to get that meeting off early.

Sure.

Yeah.

All right.

We called the meeting back to order following our break, and we're now ready for, um,

Board of Equalization application number 73, 46447 Woodbourne Lane.

Swearing the witnesses here.

Good morning.

I do.

I do.

All right.

OK. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen.

OK.

All right.

Well, good morning.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my plea here.

There's three major points that I'd like to address with you guys.

First of all, I don't I would submit that my initial assessment is never correct when I bought the house and it hasn't been

to date after we've made numerous attempts to try to rectify it.

And let me say that the Assessor Office, the people that came to see me have been excellent and very professional.

And I would say that they went over my house with a fine tooth comb.

In any event,

We purchased this house December 2nd, 2021.

At that time, we purchased the house for $1,275,000.

Now, I paid more than I should have for the house, but in any event, that's on me.

I didn't have any idea how properties were assessed here.

I didn't understand that it was 100% assessment.

It wouldn't make any difference because any other property I've ever known has only been 85%.

So the first thing that happened is on December, I told you that 121275 and first thing off the bat January, the assessment was increased by almost 3 million bucks.

So I didn't think too much of that.

And I thought, well, we'll review it next time along.

And so imagine my chagrin when the 2022 assessment came up and it was $1.5 million.

The idea being that there's 38 properties up in Old Ballard and I was the highest on the whole street, okay?

Well, I didn't think that was right, especially in view of the 100% assessment because there's no way that house was worth that much.

So I called the assessor's office and a very nice lady came out, Patricia Brandt came out, and she went over my property, every corner, everything.

And she worked it out and got the assessment down to 1.390.

So I wasn't thrilled with that, but I thought, well, okay, we'll see.

I didn't really understand how things worked with this 100% thing.

So I said, okay, we'll see what happens next year.

Well, next year,

that got kicked right back up to over 1.5.

All right, so again, I called the county and Louis Hendron came out and worked over my place and these guys were great and they came back with a reduction, okay.

The problem is that there's a lot of inequities in the assessment in an upper boundary, okay.

Please refer to page 3 and page 10 of my proposal.

These are the letters I wrote to the county, and they explain pretty much what overall the inequities are.

There were 12 houses in my first letter, there were 12 houses that were assessed lower than me and were much larger with lots, lots of amenities, finished basements, everything like that.

All right.

And so we worked through that.

and we looked at the average of these properties and the average of the top 10 of these things was 1.377 million.

and average square foot cost of $237.

Well, mine was in there up around the $300s.

I felt that that was not the right way to go and I have since then.

But here again, I realized this is a pretty complicated deal.

much more difficult I would assume than a hundred percent than it would be if it was looks and but I don't understand how this thing and never found out how these assessments were engaged whether you have some logarithm that you use but in any event I've always felt there was a target on my back in this house okay because of the assessments that were put out for me so

All that information on inequities is in those documents and the company paperwork, all right?

So now we go to fair market value.

This is much more interesting.

In as much as the, there were only two houses sold since I lived there, okay?

In 22, there was a house sold for 1.4

1.475.

And last year, where we're discussing this particular assessment, there was only one house sold.

And it was a nice house.

And this house was sold for 1.34 after being on the market for six months.

okay but basically he had a hard time selling this house and he wanted another hundred thousand he didn't get it all right and I've been in the house they had a finished basement three-car garage much larger lot than I had okay and then I looked through this thing this recently and I said well how'd this happen

In this year, 2023, or the 24 assessment, the house that was sold for 1475 assessment is now currently 1227.

How does that work?

It went down, all right?

Now,

My assessment was reduced I think to one for 17 or something like that.

And the guy that sold his house six months ago for 1.340, he got his kicked up over 5 million.

These houses aren't worth that much.

and the reason they're not worth that much is no one can mortgage the size of houses, especially at the rates today, okay?

The houses in Old Trail are selling like hotcakes.

Everybody's dancing.

They throw these things up and that's because people can mortgage under a million bucks.

You can't be paying your taxes, your insurance and your mortgage on a house that's over a million dollars, all right?

That being said, and an increased assessment, it reduces the value of your house, because if you want to buy a house in Upper Ballard, I would propose that you have to pay cash for it, all right?

So, in general, all that documentation is in your packet, printed off your website, all right?

But I would like, my house is 4,825 square feet.

That's what the insurance people figured out.

I don't know, your guys are maybe, I think, 1,4921, very close, but in the same.

and all the average of old houses in all of old trails are like $255 a square foot.

The new houses are more.

They're $290 a square foot.

My house was made in 2007.

So I'm proposing that,

My assessment should certainly be in that range at 255.

Now I ask you for 1.3 million, which I think is the proper assessment.

I've always proposed that.

Now that comes out to roughly around 268 square foot.

So I would pose that my approach to this and the documentation would illustrate that that's what my assessment should be.

So the county notes that average values for land in Albemarle County have increased by 28% over the last three years.

And you're requesting

An adjustment to a price that's 2% over what you bought the property for three years ago.

I understand what you're saying.

And I understand that properties rise and fall.

Okay.

And there's no doubt that that particular part of the county has been beneficial for developers.

But that doesn't mean that the individual property is worth that much.

in my opinion anyhow.

If you take a look at the assessments, the inequity in assessments really drives me nuts.

I mean, there's a couple of guys that are up over 1.5 million and there's reasons for it.

They're bigger houses, they're bigger lots, they're this and everything else than mine.

All this stuff is bigger and have more amenities than mine.

That's why I think, I understand what you're saying.

I would tell you, if you're familiar with the area, my house is a nice house, but they're all nice houses up there, okay?

And, you know, there are various sizes and so forth, some are bigger than the others, but the thing that always is important to me is the other amenities, you know, three-car garages, finished basements, larger lots, bigger houses.

Mostly bigger houses.

And that is the thing that stood out to me in my evaluation.

Now I've done this twice.

I did it in 22 and I did it again in 23.

I'm pretty sure that the information that I've given you is pretty correct.

And especially the assessment, the average assessment on those larger houses is 1.337.

Okay.

And that's on page 13.

and I also have a map there that shows you where the houses are located and it also gives you a color code as to whether they're larger, they have a bigger lot, or they have more amenities, okay?

I guess I rest my case in the fact that I think my square foot cost should be decidedly closer to the mean than it is.

And I understand what you said about I'm asking for a reduction, but I still maintain that my property is not worth more than $1.3 million now.

It's up to you guys to decide.

But I put together everything I could on this, and I think you're gonna have to admit, there's certainly some inequities up there.

Okay, any further questions for the appellant?

Okay, thank you, sir.

That's right.

Oh, okay.

So I really didn't, I can't really hear.

I don't know.

I have my hearing aid in, but it's not working.

Okay.

Yes, the sound in this room can be a little iffy at times.

So sometimes you have to get real close to the microphone.

So I found that when I present to the board that I got to get real close.

So we believe that Mr. Jones has provided kind of a large number of sales from the general area of Old Trail

and that it's really difficult to take kind of that overall average per square foot sale price amount from a large range of properties and relate that to anything.

specific and we found that you know that's been an argument in the past since it's very difficult well this comes out to 200 a square foot so I think mine should be similar to that or something like that but if that analysis doesn't take into account the differences between the properties it just is an overall per square foot we've provided you know that there are five

Sales that happened in 2023, the most recent for this assessment, this reassessment in the Ballard Upper Creekside neighborhood and that the model that we created

or adjusted for this year for this market area or this neighborhood is appropriate.

One thing I actually don't like to see but it happens occasionally is that we go out and look at a property and I like to think that we just get it right.

So we, as Mr. Jones said, we looked at this property, Trish went out there,

Last year, I believe, and we lowered it from 1.5 to about 1.39

on that review.

We made a few changes.

Why we look at it again and we see something slightly different again this year, I'm not sure, but it does occasionally happen.

What we did this year was we adjusted the grade.

So one of the things that you can talk about is there are larger houses, there are smaller houses,

but one of the actually largest components of the value is the grade or quality of the home.

So you can have a much smaller home that's a much higher quality and it's gonna be worth a lot more and it's gonna sell for a lot more than a property that a building that is larger.

But generally speaking, the larger the home, the higher the quality is gonna end up being.

That's not a strict rule but it really matters what you're looking at.

In this case we believe that we have gotten, now that we've looked at this property, this house in detail several times, that we've got the grade correct.

We obviously have the measurements correct because each time that my staff has been out there they would have measured based on

our standards for how you measure a house for square footage.

We don't know what an insurance company does when they measure a house or where they even if they measure it at all.

I don't know if the insurance companies do or if they take that information from somewhere else or if they measure it from a picture or something like that.

I'm not sure of the source.

All I know is that our source is very accurate when it comes to measuring a home.

and the difference there is really minimal anyway.

The major difference would be in quality.

and then the kind of what Mr. Jones said about being used to 85%, I mean Virginia is 100% and what Virginia means by 100% of assessed value, the assessed value is 100% of the market value is that when we create a model and we're not actually reaching exactly 100% even on properties that just sold,

we are gonna be within 10% above or below the value typically and the majority of properties should be within 10% above or below what they sold for if our model that we use to value those properties is correct.

Now we don't wanna be within 10% of what people just paid for it.

If we're within 5% I think we're doing a really good job.

and we generally are much tighter than that 10% range.

But just because any specific property falls above or below what they have just paid for it or paid for it in the last few years is not an indication that that is not market value for the property.

Now there are ranges and you know different people looking at a house and how much they would pay for it.

Everybody's got something that they like differently about homes or will see a home and you know and say you know this is great or somebody else would look at the same thing and not like it.

So obviously the amount that the buyer and seller come to an agreement on can vary even on the same home if different people were involved.

So it's really hard to, you know, market value is almost an abstract idea.

It's never really, really specific and really accurate.

So accuracy is not really, not a term you can use for assessments or even an appraised value that a fee appraiser's doing.

It's really coming up with a reasonable number based on market data.

So when we,

When we get an argument that I paid this much a number of years ago, and that the market has changed drastically since then, but my house shouldn't change with it, I think that argument should be taken with a grain of salt.

That the property, if you take it like it is, the property was worth what the person paid for it at the time,

with a little variance, and that property, like every other property in the county, will be changing over time.

Now, not every property in the county changes the same.

Not every neighborhood changes the same, even in our assessments, over time.

But we like to look at those general changes to kind of show

What would normal be?

This neighborhood, maybe instead of 28% over that period, would have gone up 20%.

Maybe it would have gone up 45%.

But in general, we would expect a much higher than 2% increase over that time period.

I think we presented sales and information that supports where we were.

I think we

have done a, you know, had a great opportunity and Mr. Jones led us into the home on multiple occasions and we have very accurate information.

So I think that, you know, our assessment is very solid.

And actually, I would like to give Louis.

Louis is the appraiser this year because Trish has retired.

Do you have anything to add to?

Okay, good, good.

Then that's all of the information we have unless you have questions.

I have a question for my own edification.

Okay, so yes.

So as I said, we work with our model and really the way you judge an assessment with the mass appraisal process is when we come up with an assessment, how does it compare to the sale price of properties that have sold?

So the first grid that we have is showing the assessment to sale ratio.

So that's where we show that we're within that 10% or 5% or whatever number

So in 2003, five lots, five houses sold.

Correct.

And your assessments were, does that come out to actually percentage?

That's a percentage.

So they range from 90%.

You were off by less than 1%.

Oh, I'm sorry.

So yeah, that's a median.

So our central tendency measure is a standard for assessments.

So the median of all the sales, which is basically the middle of the five.

and then for the COD 4.7.

COD is that variance between the upper and the lower and how closely everything relates to that median.

So this is how you double check how accurate your.

This is our standard.

a request for

Let's say after we change the amount of a one-story and a two-story, the base rate of those houses, we might have been at 95% ratio, median ratio, and then we would adjust this neighborhood between the land and the improvement multiplier so that the median would then come up to 100%.

So that's what we talk about assessing at 100%.

And the bottom is if you get a- That's only for an appeal.

Correct.

I mean, there's no way you could do.

How many do you assess?

20?

50,000.

50,000.

Correct.

Right.

So you have to, okay.

Okay.

OK, we'll have rebuttal from the appellant.

Yes, sir.

First of all, I certainly understand what you said about trying to match all of the numerous properties and everything.

And that's why I reduced it to Upper Ballard.

There's only 38 houses.

I would submit that I don't think Creekside is the same area as Upper Ballard, but that's how you guys have it put together.

That's the way it's got to be.

I also am interested in what that mean increase between these five houses what that you guys figured.

You've mentioned that you had figured that the increase percentage increase in the property on these five.

That's a multiplication of the average increase for each year for the three years.

So one of those years by itself was 13.45%.

Thank you.

All right.

Another thing that I would challenge, I'm very surprised at, is the width of these plus or minus 10%.

That seems to me to be a lot of money on a property, but that's the way you guys have it together.

And I don't know what the average would be.

or the mean would be in the increase, but I would say that 10% is a lot.

I'll do accept the county's square foot evaluation.

That's fine.

I mean, I'm not sure exactly.

You're right.

Who knows what the insurance companies are going to do.

And I would certainly think your number is closer to the mark.

I still believe that houses of quality, now the big thing about houses of quality, this is most interesting point of the old deal, the money that was purchased to this house that you couldn't get another nicer house than this one that sold for $1,340.

Okay?

This place was fabulous.

This guy did everything.

He had some dough and he put it into this place.

And so I have a nice house.

I have a very nice house, but it is nowhere as nice as this house, as far as amenities are concerned and quality of workmanship.

Not too much more than I can say, gentlemen.

I certainly appreciate you guys listening to what I had to say.

And I'm hopeful that you guys give my requests some consideration.

Who was the builder of your house?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

I just moved here a couple of years ago.

I don't know anything about who put the buildings up out there.

I do know that they're quality guys.

I mean, one guy died that built my house.

But I was told he was a very quality guy.

Thank you.

OK. Well, thank you very much.

I learned a lot.

Thank you.

I mean, it's the easiest appraisal ever.

It's in a neighborhood that's there are so many comps that it's it's obvious that the assessment is correct.

I think I agree on that.

I thought the assessor's report made a really good point that a lot of the comps he was using had finished basements, which are of less value per square foot, right?

All of his square footage is above ground.

Really nice house.

I tend to agree.

I think it should be, I would vote to affirm the decision or the valuation of the appraiser's office.

I just had a question.

They did an evaluation last year and lowered it.

Yes, sir.

36.

We changed the grade from an A plus three to an A plus two.

Yes, well it was based on actually this year going from an A plus two to an A plus one and when we have a different appraiser look at it occasionally we have a slightly different view on that.

Unfortunately,

It's never going to be to the point where every one of my appraisers, they look at a house and they'll all come up with exactly the same grade because that that grade can be based on different things.

But in this case, we have again changed the grade from down to an A plus one.

And the house that he was referring to, that is the nicest house and quote, the nicest house in the neighborhood we have is an A plus two.

Okay, is there a motion?

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Yeah.

Mr. Mayo, I believe Ms. Love is here.

So if you want to

If Mrs. Love is ready, we are ready.

We will now hear the appeal of Board of Equalization application number 41 for property with address 2320 Minor Mill Road.

Mrs. Love, let me swear you in when you're ready here.

I do.

Okay.

I have documents.

Ma'am, are these the same ones you've already given us, or is this additional?

Good morning gentlemen.

My name is Jennifer Love.

And in 2022, I decided after having drug my two kids and two ex-husbands all over the country and lived in Richmond for back in 2009, where Charlottesville was actually part of my territory.

I decided to return back to Virginia.

My kids were here.

My mother moved here, my siblings.

And I found the most amazing place

on Minor Mill Road, which is the best road in Charlottesville.

As a matter of context, I grew up in Mississippi on a small rural farm.

And what I wanted to do was to give my grandkids that same experience since they were suburban kids.

And so I moved from Florida and moved to Charlottesville.

I live in a house that was built in 1976.

It was initially 2100 square feet, four bedrooms and two baths.

In 2009, they added a three car detached garage.

And then in 2011, they added a house addition where they added a sunroom and a bedroom.

When I was looking at the house in January of 2022, my property tax assessment, the land assessment was $190,200.

The building assessment was 576,400 for a total of 766,600.

Tax is about 65,46.

In May, the house was listed for $795,000 based on comps.

I purchased it and closed on it on June 30th for $850,000 which was $55,000 over this price.

I moved into the property in July and as I was moving in, I had some people doing some work on the garage.

I was told that there was a woman who was walking around on the property.

I live alone and so I know everybody who's supposed to be on my property.

I approached her and she explained that she was with the county assessor's office and asked if she could walk around and I said, yes.

That was on July 2022.

In January, I was surprised to receive my taxes that show that my taxes had gone up 20.5%.

The land was 199,400, 724,600, and 924,000.

And this was surprising to me because when the assessor was there, the house was in the exact same condition that it was when I purchased it.

I hadn't even painted at that particular time.

And so I was surprised because it was just six months later that the House had appreciated, according to the assessment of $157,400.

That was $129,000 over the lease price in six months and $74,000 over the purchase price.

And according to your county, the average 2023 tax assessment for residential up to 20 acres was 11.31%.

But mines came in at 20.5%, which is a 45% increase over the average.

After I received the assessment, I contacted the assessor's office to understand the reason for the increase, given that I had not made any improvements to the property and I was directed to the person who conducted the assessment.

After we were connected, I asked how she arrived at her assessment.

Other than asking me if the property had thermal heating, which it did, and it was more than 30 years old, she did not provide the reason for the increase other than to say all of my neighbors had received an increase, and at least one of my neighbors had received an increase of almost 30%.

When I pushed back, she didn't explain how she arrived at the assessment, but she did tell me this, you can always sell the property, which I thought was an interesting comment.

By the time I realized that I could appeal, the date had passed.

My 2024 assessment arrived and the fair market value was 232 on the land, 708,500 on the building for a total of 940,500.

for a tax of $8,032, a 1.78% change when the average was 4.28%.

So after my experience in 2023, I decided that I was going to appeal.

And I received a revised value.

The land stayed the same, 232,200, but the building went down to 69400 for a fair market total of 922,400, which was 78,000.

77 in taxes.

And while the assessed value was lower, I don't believe that it was consistent with the properties located on my street.

And what I did was I actually looked at every single property on both sides of the street.

But because the topography is different, I focus my attention mainly on the houses that were on my side of the street.

A second assessor came out to my property in March of 2024 and she explained to me that the pole barn listed in your records had been incorrectly listed as another structure and that there were also other structures on the property that were not present.

She stated that this should result in a reduction.

It's clear that the initial assessor who walked around my property back in 2022 based her assessment partly on outdated information which resulted in the increase in 2023.

Now I have provided you with three properties.

The first one is 2280 Minor Mill Road.

That is my neighbor directly to the right of me.

He's located next door.

His house is older than mine.

It was built in 1961, but it's larger in square footage by 272 square feet, has more bedrooms than mine, more bathrooms, and has 1.89 more acres than my property.

It has a three-car detached garage with a bedroom over the garage, but it was assessed for $114,600 less than my property.

Comp number two is located directly across the street from my property.

It's newer than my property, having been built in 2000.

It's larger by 1,160 square feet, has more bedrooms and bathrooms than my property, is 1.17 acres larger than my property.

However, it was only assessed $7,900 more than my property, despite being significantly larger.

when the other property, which was also larger, was assessed $114,600 less.

And finally, the third comp that I used is on the same side, two houses down.

It's nine years older than my property.

It's smaller in square footage, but it has two more bedrooms and bathrooms than my property.

It's double the acreage of my property by 5.22 acres.

And it was assessed at $106,500 less than my property.

To me these comps show that whether larger or smaller than my property, my property was assessed at a higher rate when compared to them.

The 2023 assessment, which was based on incorrect information, set a standard for the initial 2024 assessment, which I appealed and resulted in a reduction.

However, when one larger property is assessed six figures less than my property, while another significantly larger property is only assessed $7,900 more than my property, and a third property, which is actually closer in size but double the acreage, is also assessed six figures less than my property, your data shows that my property was assessed at a higher rate.

Even when I look at all of the properties on both sides of the streets, which are smaller or larger, with or without more acreage, their assessments are sometimes 380,200 for the smaller properties than mine.

I am proposing, and I based it on in 2023, the assessment was 11.31.

That was your average.

So that's how I came up with the land assessment.

I did the same thing for the building assessment for a total of 859303.

And I think context is important.

And that was exhibit one.

So exhibit two is just for your perusal.

It is the tax records.

for my property beginning in 2024 and going to 2016.

And then I started at 2010 because remember I told you the property was remodeled in 2011.

And if you look at the taxes, the taxes show that you guys started taxing based on the addition in 2011 because the taxes went up from 2,335 to 4,066.

And it just shows you what the property values, what the taxes and the assessments have been.

Exhibit number three shows those three properties that I talked about.

My neighbor to the right, my neighbor across the street, and my neighbor two houses down.

And not only does it show for 2024, I also listed the assessments and the details for 2023, 2022, and 2021 for your consideration.

Good timing.

Any questions for the applicant?

Okay, thank you so much.

The Assessor's Office

So we provided the because the applicant provided these comparables in the first place, we in our presentation have the same comparable, the uniformity comparables, the neighbors properties in a grid.

And you can see in this kind of the where the devil's in the details.

And I talked about before you why you can't look at average per square foot amounts, because some of the differences are sometimes subtle.

You know, sometimes more obvious.

So when you're looking at these properties, we're talking about 2280 Minor Mill Road.

And I have this on the map so you can see the addresses.

You can see her property surrounded in blue.

2280 is next to it here.

2325 across the street.

And I think 2350 is over here.

But 202280 is a one story, which is actually superior when you're talking about value per square foot.

But the above grade area is 1000 square feet smaller.

1100 square feet smaller somewhere in there.

It's got a finished basement of about 1400 square feet.

So it appears to have the same amount of living area.

Inferior, correct.

It's

We have it as a lower grade, a C grade when the subject property we have is a B grade.

So all of those combinations with a few other minor differences in how the land is, now the land actually looks like it's treated the same way.

Other than that it's different sizes.

You'll get an opportunity to rebut at the end, ma'am.

2325 Minor Mill Road is larger.

It's a higher quality.

It's got, you know, it's bigger.

It's superior.

It's the same one and a half story.

and from looking at this, I'm not quite sure why it's only about $7,000 more, but all of the information is entered here.

There must be something else and I'll bring it up actually to answer that question.

This is pin 25443.

We have some adjustments to this property that functional issues with this property and that's why it's not a lot more that it would appear it should be that are very specific to this neighbor's property having to do with layouts and some of the size issues for this type of property.

The third one is 2350.

This is half the size of the subject property.

It's a lower grade, a C plus one.

It's also got some finished basement, not a lot, 525 square feet.

But it's also got a second home.

the dwelling number two and a few other things.

But overall, it's a far inferior property.

So when you start looking at the specific differences between these, then the differences in the values come out.

It's really hard to look at them overall and say, why is that one below mine?

Or why is that one not too far above mine?

But when you look at those details, I think it explains the property and why we're where we are.

Now, the applicant is asking for a value that's actually far below what she paid for it.

And that to me is always a red flag.

And unless something has drastically happened to the property condition wise, I don't think there's any support for that.

I don't have those definitions in front of me, but I can show you on the map here.

It's a little easier to see.

So it's generally this green area here.

It's a pretty wide area.

Green area?

that actually is the subject property the purple I'm not sure what the purple is oh that's override commercial so it's a commercial property so sometimes you'll see those all that green is residential that's within the correct okay that's a pretty that's a good sized area

Correct.

Our market areas, in order to have enough sales information, they need to be big enough, 500 to 1,000 parcels.

Do you adjust it at all with the number of sales within those parcels?

Will it change them when we see some reason?

Yeah, exactly.

And sometimes when those borders, the borders aren't really defined.

It's not like it goes along a street because you can't have the ones on each side of the street being different neighborhoods.

I mean, is there a, there is.

So,

This is a rural area, and that was a pretty homogeneous neighborhood.

Like in a developed neighbor subdivision.

Correct.

Yeah, there was a little variance.

Yeah, there varies a little bit in those homes in there.

The more homogeneous those homes are, if they're all tract houses, you're going to be a lot tighter.

But when you're in the rural area, you've got all kinds of different influences on the properties.

The properties can vary.

You know, you can have a

a C or D grade house very close to a mansion.

Okay.

Any further questions for the Assessor's Office?

Okay.

So I'm glad you raised the issue about what I paid for the house that was it was listed as 795 and I in fact paid over the market for it but in six months Europe it you appraised it or your person appraised it at 900 and

$27,000 in six months.

So I wanted to address that.

And then you talked about functional, and you're right about the house across the street.

It is far superior.

You talked about it had functional issues.

Function will have to do with, you know, you might have 3,000 square feet in two different houses, but one of them, that 3,000 square feet could have been 2,000 square feet with the 1,000 square foot addition.

And the way that addition was added might not really flow.

It might be hard to access or something like that.

And that's just an example.

I don't know exactly what the issue is with the neighbor.

So I'm not here gentlemen not to pay taxes because trust me, I pay a lot of taxes and I believe in taxes.

I don't have kids who go to the school district but I believe that my mind is a terrible thing, the ways some kids should be educated so part of my taxes go to that.

I don't have city trash pickup.

I was surprised to find out that I don't.

And the road isn't kept by the county.

We keep it ourselves.

To me, this is a fairness issue.

And yes, I'm new to Abramile County, but I listened to what you had to say.

I provided the comparables.

And I'm just hoping that you will digest what I had to say, because again, I don't mind paying taxes, but I want to be treated like everybody else on Minor Mill Road.

and I don't think that I'm being treated that way by the Assessor's Office.

So thank you for your time.

I have a question.

That was what the note said.

Yes.

Let me go take a look.

Wait, I'm looking at the neighbor's house.

Sorry.

Yeah, it looks like the majority of the value came off of the outbuilding for that reason.

And that there was also a slight change to the house was reduced to the building.

It was reduced by about $5,000.

And I'm not seeing, it's nothing obvious as to exactly what that was.

Oh, okay.

You didn't look at the property group.

Okay.

All right.

That's the outbuilding one, but it's the building change that I'm not sure of.

Okay, so the fireplaces were found to be inoperable, so we took the value off for them, reduced that value and the reduced reduction in geothermal condition.

Yes, sir.

And a comment about paying $50,000 above asking, that has pretty much been the market for a couple of years.

Assessments are based on the market.

Well, I don't know how you could justify lowering an assessment $120,000 less than they paid for a year and a half ago, unless you're in a

So what's the, do you guys do like a blended evaluation of the

the age of the house, because I saw that it was originally built at one point and then there was like an addition, right?

Correct.

We have it in 1976 as an original year built and then a year remodeled of 2009.

However, overall, we're still calling this an average home for a house built in 1976.

We haven't upgraded it.

and reduce the depreciation based on that renovation in 2009.

Okay.

I will move we affirm the assessment at 9.22400.

All opposed?

Unanimous to affirm the decision of the Assessor's Office with respect to application number 41.

Okay.

So now we'll hear from the applicant for Port of Equalization application number five for 524 Lego Drive.

And I will swear in the applicant.

First of all, I'd like to review

The picture I provided to you guys of the front of our property, which has, you can't even see our house because our house sits back about 500 feet from Lego Drive.

So there's very little value for, what do you call it?

Frontage for the home.

All our neighbors have at least 150 to 200 feet of frontage.

We don't.

Secondly our driveway is the old logging trail that went in when the original property was going to be established so it's been there for many many years and when Rick Breyer built the home he didn't do anything to modify the driveway at all so we have a very elevated and dangerous driveway the drivers for

Amazon and UPS, they don't like to come up our driveway and I understand why because they can't back down and do it, have to do it very slowly.

So my problem in reviewing the assessment is I find the assessment increase from 22 to 23 was 8.6%, which we found reasonable.

What we don't find reasonable

is the assessment for 2024.

Our land is going up 49%.

I find that absolutely outstanding and I'm sure you would too if you were in our shoes.

There's been no improvement to the property at all.

The market improvements or the house itself is going up 15%

as well.

In total we're going up 26% this year versus 8.6 in 2023.

So given the history and now this what I call an unreasonable assessment,

I'm asking for your guys to judge it.

As I put through an eight and a half percent increase from 2023 for the land, I would revalue that at 287,850 from the 23 value.

and the improvements in the house, I went ahead and just flat lined it at eight and a half percent also, bringing the total value to $872,550 versus $1,013,600.

So the difference is $141,050 assessment increase.

And

beyond what I would assess it at given that I was given the option.

So there's a 16% differential right there over what I consider over the top, especially the land assessment.

So we started our appeal on March the 1st, and here it is, what, May 24th or whatever it is.

And so our taxes are due tomorrow.

So I need to understand what we should pay.

But I don't accept that we should accept the million O13 600 assessment.

And I think if you were in our shoes, you wouldn't accept that either.

I wanna thank Billy when she provided us with other comps in the neighborhood.

So I can go back and compare our house, which is 2,914 square feet.

Our house is terraced.

The people above us, we're stuck in the middle, and then there's people below us, okay?

So our house is wedged into the property, just so Rick could have another piece of property to add on to, I'm sure.

And he told us at the time, he knew it was not the value of anything else, and he didn't want to build as small a house as we wanted.

So there's always been a differential between ours and our neighbors' properties.

I took a look at the comps and I went back and looked at 1115-23, 1731 locust shade lane was assessed last year at .8857, the sale value was .885.

yet the house has 32% more space than we do.

And actually it's more than that.

Cause I was rounding up to 3000 square feet and we only have 2914.

I also looked at 70 Hickory Lane.

That's also a 31 year old home sold April 20th of 23.

It was assessed at 699.

It sold at 680.

It had 12% less square footage than us.

Then I looked at what's up on the top of the mountain in Ashcroft at 2516 Summit Ridge Trail, which is a house assessed at 166, sold at 165.

It has 3905 square feet, and it's about 32, 33% additional square footage.

I've been told I shouldn't look at something that's been done here

14, 2024, excuse me.

But 510 Lego, which is two doors down from us, sold.

The house had been prepped with new upgrades recently.

It's 27 years old, same as us.

They've had substantial improvements.

They put on a new roof last summer.

I think it was August, September.

They also

added painting the whole outside of the house.

It has very nice curb appeal because it's had landscaping done and everything.

That house listed at eight, it was assessed in 2023, excuse me, at 842-700.

It sold for 1.06.

It went on the market at 899.

However, that house has 41%, it's actually 43% more space in the house than we do because it's got 4,202 square feet.

So I think I'm justifiable in asking for a reassessment

down to my original submission back whenever it was, April or March, of 872,550.

And that's a 16% below where it is presently assessed for this year.

Those are my arguments.

I think they're fair.

I've tried to be logical in how I looked at this thing, not just 100% biased.

And I hope you will too.

Thank you.

Are there any questions for the applicant?

OK.

First, I'd like to say, Mr. Mullen, I always recommend you pay your bill.

And if the board makes a change, the bill will be adjusted.

You have to pay your bill.

Well, you're only paying the first half.

Right.

If the board were to make a change, most likely your second half would just be reduced by that amount.

So you'll ultimately be assessed based on whatever the final value is.

All right.

Looking at the properties, do we have the same properties kind of explained in our write-up that Mr. Mullen has provided?

The board does know that you can't take into account transactions that have taken place after January 1st.

I don't think that really would make any difference in the analysis, but that information specifically is forbidden.

for consideration.

But looking at some of these, the second property, I think it was the first comparable, 510 Lego that he was referring to.

And this is one of the things we talked about having 4,262 square feet.

He does have that much finished living area.

However,

The majority of that, it's actually on the screen now, it's 1,502 square feet of finish in the basement, which is inferior to finish above grade and

That counts less in the value of the property.

It would get less if somebody was trying to buy it.

And it's modeled to provide a lower amount in the total value also.

So this is actually a 2,760 square foot above grade

Home, it's a little bit smaller above grade than the subject property.

It does have the added benefit.

I'm not saying it's not worth anything, but it does have the added benefit of that finished 1,500 square feet.

but we did provide these comparables to show the comparison so you can look at the style of the homes, the grades of the homes, the square footage above and below grade and we believe that they still indicate that this property is appropriately assessed based on our description and the model for this neighborhood.

A reduction down to the requested amount

would put it down to the lowest, below the actual lowest assessment for properties in this area.

This is on the ridge.

Well, his property is down a little bit below the ridge, but we basically refer to this as the ridge generally.

And this is a very nice

setting, neighborhood.

The views are excellent up there.

The houses sell very well.

Some of them are older.

There are a lot of newer ones being built as Mr. Byer builds them.

He does all of the home construction up there.

And

There's a lot of demand for this clinic close into the city area and with the views up there on top of the mountain.

So we believe that the information that we have is correct and that it appropriately creates a market value for the property.

And about the

I know that.

You're not on the top.

You're down a little bit from the top.

Also, he had provided the pictures of the frontage of the property where his driveway is.

Now, curb appeal is something you hear about when you

talk about homes and home selling.

It doesn't mean you have to be able to see the home from the street.

It means what does the home look like when you see it.

The main draw of this area is not what it looks like from the street.

It's what the view looks like from the house.

So I don't believe that's really a component or an issue in the valuation here.

I think that's

That's all the information.

Everything else is in the packet.

Everything in this neighborhood has gone up.

He did mention the increase in the land.

We realized, and one of the things that we do as we review each neighborhood each year is we have to determine

How much of whatever value change there is applies to the land and how much applies to the improvements.

So we either change the land rates in order to increase the land or we increase the multiplier on the improvements to increase the improvements or decrease if the case may be.

In some cases we do both to different degrees.

This year we realized that the land, because land does not sell up here on the mountain.

Mr. Beyer does not sell lots and have other builders bill on there.

sells the lot and the house to the people who buy them.

So there are no clear land sales.

So over years of analysis, sometimes in that situation, without a clear sale, at least every once in a while, we could fall behind on that aspect of the value.

So this year we made a change across the board to the land rates that we were using and brought them up to where we thought they should be to be appropriate for this location.

Then we also made an adjustment, a smaller adjustment to the improvements because we still needed to get to where the sales were indicating we needed to be.

And as you see in the packet, there are the four sales that took place in 2023.

We are pretty close, 98%, basically 100% and 100%, and then one at 113%.

So the range, there are only four,

We would like to have more sales, but it's not a large neighborhood, but it pretty clearly supports overall that our values are appropriate.

Any questions for the Assessor's Office?

I understand reassessment totally.

I find this egregious to say my property now goes up 49% in one year.

That's absurd.

and I can't justify that no matter which way I look at it.

And to say that our house property has gone up 15% and historically it's gone up 8 to 12% in 2023 is my argument.

All I'm asking for is using a logical progression, I think we are more fair than the assessor's office is.

this year.

We've never argued before.

We understand property values have gone up in all of Albemarle County.

But this is absurd.

And I can't accept 49% in one year.

We live on Social Security.

We don't have this ability to just jump up and pay for anything and everything.

So please understand where we're coming from as you take a look.

Please be fair and please don't be over the top.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to deliberate regarding your application and you will receive a copy of a letter in the mail within 30 days of our decision.

But you're welcome to stay and listen to the deliberations if you like.

Okay, who would like to start?

I'll start by saying that one thing that we're not permitted to do is to reduce a valuation simply based on a percentage increase from the previous year, right?

We were tasked with

with measuring the value of the property in the year where we are regardless of whether it went up or down as compared to the previous year.

So that's one issue.

Another issue is that we're not permitted to reduce or increase the value of a property based on how the owner of the property makes money or how much money that person makes.

So that would have to be disregarded.

I just quickly ran, the land value jump is obviously a big number, and I understand the assessors, I understand the difficulty of acquiring land value from this particular neighborhood because of its

the developer and the builder capture that cost and don't really disseminate it.

So you gotta make some assumptions.

And from the looks of my math, you're assuming I did the assessor provided comps.

The subject property is 39% of the value is in the land.

then your four comps that the assessor provided are 37, 28, 37, and 31.

I understand it's hard to get to that number if you don't have the details.

That's a pretty high percentage.

I do this for a living and you know,

We'd like to see that our land costs are somewhere in the, it's a pretty wide range.

It depends on the product.

Town homes are different than single family, but you know, 20 to 30%, 30% being the tie-in.

Typical single family, you know, medium around 25%.

The comps that the owner provided are, again, there's at 39.

18, 37, and 25.

I think that, I don't know what the anomaly there is on the 18.

The 7, 1781 Locust Shade Lane.

And the 37 is 510 Lego, which is probably closer to the neighbor to their house.

Just look at the address.

And then the last one is on Hickory.

It's 25%.

That's more

reasonable to me.

So those are my thoughts.

Mr. Mitchell, if I can address two things there.

First of all,

The percentage of the total value in the land will go up as the building gets older because there's more depreciation on the building.

So if you're used to looking at new homes as opposed to that ratio, it'll be different as that happens.

Also in the owner provided comps, two of those are from the lower neighborhood that don't have the views and in the land is less valuable

in Ashcroft as opposed to Ashcroft Ridge.

Mr. Lynch, could you explain

You said you reevaluated how you placed a value on the land.

Could you

Oh, yes, sir.

So on the screen right now, you'll see basically, like we do on all residential properties, we have a home site value and then anything over that acreage would be residual.

So we place a base rate on that home site value.

And this year, we are saying that for Ashcroft Ridge, the base rate is $275,000.

So if you just have a one in this case, in the rural areas, we use two acres, but in neighborhoods like this, we use a smaller acreage as typical.

And so in this neighborhood, we use one acre as the base.

And we are valuing that base at $275,000.

and then we have adjustments to that like view.

Did that base rate, you said you reevaluated because, so did that jump way up?

I would have to look, do we have the amount from last year, the rate?

It would have been an even, you know, a rounded number but because it has the adjustments on it.

Yes.

We got to, we got to, we got to pay it to keep the view.

Do you understand?

Because the house sits below us as trees as well.

Okay.

Is there a component of the land calculation that

Yes, we have the view adjustment, which is, sorry, went to the wrong screen here.

So in this, for the subject property is 1.4, so it's a 40% increase.

So we evaluate that based on what we see at the property, or what you can see from the property, I should say.

and we have the rest of their information.

The base rate last year was 185,000 for that first acre and it went to 275 this year.

40% seems maybe high to me.

They could be anywhere from 110 to 200%.

And there's some really nice views from Ashcroft.

Could you come up to the microphone?

I think what you're missing is the majority of the views from Ashcroft are at the top of the ridge, top of the mountain, and that's Summit Ridge Trail, which is four-tenths of a mile more north of us than where we live.

We are only like 200 feet above where the clubhouse is.

Then you go up a lot further to get up to the top to Summit Ridge Trail.

So we don't have comparable views for practically the whole county from up there.

It's a pretty nice Western view though.

And did you say you pay for that easement?

We have to pay to keep it.

Right.

Yeah.

Every 10, 12 years.

We've been there for 27.

We didn't have to do it until 10 years ago, maybe first time, 12 years ago.

So I don't agree that they don't have to do it at the top.

Every property with the view can have the trees grow and obscure that view.

And the properties at the top are no exception to that.

OK.

I'm told we have a picture of the view on the parcel, so I'm going to bring that up for you.

Yes, we have views in the wintertime.

Obviously, much better, because we have leaves on the trees.

So there's the view.

OK. Is there a motion?

I'm not on the motion.

I know this would open up a can of worms for you and everybody else.

I just think that percentage is high.

I think you got 37 to 39 across the board.

Some of these are 30, 28 year comps, that is.

You had a lower number, lower base number.

Well, I can say that the view adjustment was not set based on a specific outcome or value at a certain time because let's say if five years ago he had bought the property, it would be possible that the view adjustment would have been set based on how much he paid for it at that time.

But we had no information really to go by.

For those specific ones, I'm not sure if they've changed or not, but they would have been there for decades would be my guess.