Board of Equalization Meeting   4/22/2026

We'll order the April 22nd, 2026 meeting of the Board of Equalization of Albemarle County.

And we will start with a roll call to determine if we have a quorum.

Jim Naughton present.

Frank Friedman present.

Evan Mayo present.

David Mitchell present.

David Norford present.

Thank you.

Finding a quorum, we can move to the agenda.

is on, been printed for us on these.

So first I want to look at the approval, I should say, does anyone have anything to add to the agenda?

It's printed at the bottom of the pre-printed minutes for us.

Hearing none, we can look at the minutes from the March 26, 2026 organizational meeting.

These minutes were prepared by the Assessor's Office for us.

So.

Make a motion to approve the minutes as presented.

So before we vote on that, may I move to just make a small adjustment in the date.

The March 27, 2025 at the top, I think, should be March 26, 2026.

Right.

Any disagreement there?

OK.

The day is different.

So March, yeah.

Is there a second for Mr. Norford's motion to accept the minutes subject to the correction of the date at the top to be printed as March 26, 2026?

Second.

All in favor?

All right.

All opposed?

The motion passes unanimously.

We'll now move to hearing number one, application six, James and Sarah Aldage, property ID 30733.

Good morning.

Good morning.

We're the Board of Equalization.

You'll have an opportunity to present your case.

Then the Assessor's Office will present their perspective on the application.

Then there's a short rebuttal period.

You're welcome to tell us anything that you want.

What I can tell you is that historically the applicants that are successful tend to focus on the statutory factors that we could consider and anything else may not be the best use of your time.

I'd say yes.

I need to put that in the agenda for next time.

Thank you.

I'll swear you in.

Anyone from the Assessor's Office is going to be giving testimony today.

I'd be grateful if you'd also raise your hand.

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?

I do.

And then I had submitted a presentation.

Do you have access to that a couple of times?

Yes.

Thanks for having me here today.

Thanks for your service on this board.

I appreciate the opportunity to present my case.

My name is James Aldijay.

I've been the owner of 11 Orchard Road in the Bel Air Liberty Hills neighborhood in the Samuel Miller district since 2021.

I've lived in the Bel Air neighborhood for nine years, since 2017, and previously owned 9 Canterbury Road before selling that property and buying 11 Orchard in early 2021.

I tried to lay out my arguments clearly in the presentation you received.

I've also read through the assessor's write-up and rebuttal to my arguments.

I understand that the county has a certain process and a model which allows it to generate its assessments en masse every year, but the methodology and or the model does not seem very accurate to me, at least as it relates to my home.

At the end of the day, as an outsider to this process, all I can say is that the county's assessment of this particular property at 11 Orchard Road

seemed fairly arbitrary and not grounded in reality, and that it also lacks uniformity compared to the assessments of other similar homes in the neighborhood.

And if we start by looking at page two of my presentation, you can see that the last renovation of this home was in 2014, and there have been no changes to the physical characteristics of this home or the lot since then.

And yet over the five years from 2021 to 2026, the assessed value of this home went up by four X.

before being revised down slightly upon the original appeal in March.

So in 2021, the assessors believed my home was worth $924,000.

And five years later, they believed it was worth $3.7 million despite no changes to the property.

So the county's methodology led to conclude that a home that did not change at all increased in value by 33% a year over five years when the overall county increased by 7.4% annually.

To me, it seems there's obviously something wrong here.

So it's my opinion that the assessment process, at least as it relates to my home, lacks any precision or really any grounding in basic reality or the market dynamics.

So what are the possible explanations for this?

I'm really at a loss to explain it, but here's my basic argument.

The assessed value of a home should reflect its fair market value.

The fair market value of a home is the sale price when offered for sale by one who desires but is not obliged to sell it and is bought by one who is under no necessity of having it.

The last time this home was sold was February 2021 at a price of $1.85 million.

That was the fair market value five years ago.

Since then, there have been no significant changes to the characteristics of the home, so the only explanation for the 67% increase in the assessed value is at the overall local market in this facility.

The assessor acknowledges that the four homes used in his comp set are, quote, significantly smaller than the subject.

I know it's not the assessor's standard methodology, but it seems logical to me, especially in the absence of a quality comp set for 2025, that we can look at the five other homes that were sold in early 2021 to assess whether there is fairness and uniformity in the assessment increases.

When we look at those five other similar homes that were sold around the same time in 2021 in the same neighborhood, those homes have only seen their assessments rise by about 50%.

Indeed, those increases are in a very tight band of plus 48% to plus 55%.

But for some reason, 11 orchards assessment rose first by 100% and then by 67% upon revision.

I was the seller of one of those other homes, 9 Canterbury Road, and represented myself and was for sale by owner transaction, so I'm intimately familiar with the characteristics of all the homes which sold in Bel Air in spring of 2021.

9 Canterbury sold for 1.75 million, very close to the price at which I bought 11 Orchard at 1.85 million.

9 Canterbury was of a similar grade, square footage and lot size, although it sits in the front of the neighborhood, which typically commands a price to square foot premium versus the back of the neighborhood.

Nine Canterbury's assessment over the past five years has risen 49%.

Importantly, one of those homes, 31 Old Farm, was sold twice, once in 2021 and again in 2025.

And its assessed value in 2026 is 55% higher than its sale price in 2021.

So we have two market-based transactions to validate that new assessment.

So that's really what I'm trying to understand here.

Why did the assessment for my home rise 67% and the five others only rose about 50%?

I have no good answer to this question other than Eleven Orchards assessment is not fair or equal.

A 50% increase in assessment versus the 2021 sale price would imply a value of 2.775 million.

Now, as it relates to the assessor's write-up and its defense of its methodologies, the assessor's rebuttal pushes back on using sales comps older than a year, but there's nothing in the law that prevents this.

The assessor explicitly acknowledges that the four sales in Bel Air that it used for its 2025 comps were quote, significantly smaller in size than the subject parcel, thus undermining its credibility that 2025 sales comps are sufficient for the 2026 assessment.

The assessor does not acknowledge my argument regarding the 56% increase in assessed land value from 2025 to 2026, or the elevated price per acre valuation versus two parcels nearby, which is shown on page eight of the presentation.

The assessor once again has refused to include in its comp set a home that was sold in 2025 in the neighborhood for Canterbury Road, even though the law requires that this home should be included.

This is now the fourth time I have encouraged the assessor's office to include this sale in its sales comps.

And yet the assessor claims, quote, the property was not listed in the MLS and sold to peak builders who subsequently planned to demolish the existing house and build a new one to sell, end quote.

This was an arm's length transaction between a willing buyer and seller who are unrelated parties.

It was also not a forced or distressed sale.

The intended use of this property, i.e.

potentially a tear down, does not have any bearing and is not grounds for exclusion according to Virginia law.

The lack of listing on the MLS does not have any bearing and is not grounds for exclusion according to Virginia law or standard USPAP appraisal practice.

The subsequent sale of this parcel in March 2026 does not have any bearing to the assessment date of 12-31-2045.

If this home were to have been properly included in the 2025 comp set, price per square foot average of the comp set would have dropped by 8%, an implied difference of $250,000 on my home, putting it right at that $2.8 million assessment valuation.

And lastly, the assessor dismisses the validity of the cost approach, even though other jurisdictions in Virginia rely on this approach, especially when the sales comparables in a relevant year are lacking, which was the case in Bel Air in 2025 for homes of a similar size to mine.

I once again state my belief that the fair market value of 11 Orchard Road is $2.8 million, which is where I would list the home if I were to sell it today.

And I do not think the assessor's arguments backing up its valuation methodologies will hold up to scrutiny by a court.

Thank you.

Any questions for Mr. Aldrich?

and help me out here.

I'm not sure it's in the presentation.

and you got that sales price and that information from the GIS.

On the record.

It's in their write-up.

They say it wasn't listed on the MLS and it was sold to a builder who planned to demolish it.

Yeah, in August of 25.

Similar to the four other homes which were sold that were used in the 2025 comp set.

They were all smaller homes.

Was it scraped?

What's its condition now?

Just thinking.

According to the assessor in his write-up, he said the lot was subsequently sold in 2026.

No, I mean, you live in the neighborhood.

It's not there.

It's been demolished.

OK. All right.

The appraisal report you submitted by Benjamin Associates, his opinion of value was $3 million, right?

Right.

And he could have averaged them the two values, although it's not a true average, or selected the cost approach number but didn't, presumably because he believes the sales comparison approach is the most prohibitive of the actual value.

for nine years.

I follow every transaction.

I know what my home is worth.

There's other homes that have been, you know, there's a home down the road that is a very nice home that's maybe 400 square feet.

It's on a beautiful lot.

I listed it a year ago at 3 million.

It sat for nine months.

They dropped it to 2.9.

They dropped it to 2.8.

They dropped it to 2.7.

It hasn't sold.

So, I mean, I can't use that in my

Mr. Fincham came in at a $3 million assessment.

The acceptance office only differs from that by $87,000, which is essentially the same assessment.

So we have two independent appraisals.

by two experts coming out almost identical and you're different from those.

Because you have five other homes in the neighborhood that have not changed since the last market-based transactions occurred.

You have another home that sold twice.

and all those homes went up by 50%, nothing's changed except the neighborhood value's gone up, mine's gone up by 67%.

You guys asked me to provide the appraisal if I had gotten one done.

Did Mr. Finchem include that?

So he has the three million dollars as the comparison approach.

Do we know what properties he used?

Are they the same properties that the county used in their assessment?

He didn't use the properties I asked to be included.

The properties I asked to be included, the assessor says can't be included because they weren't sold last year.

I understand that argument.

That's its methodology.

My argument is the assessor's methodology is

It's always wrong, my house.

In 2021, it was assessed at $920,000, and five years later, it was assessed at $3.8 million.

So, I mean, how am I to have any confidence in the models that they use?

I'm just telling you what I think my house is worth.

I mean, they immediately change it to 1.84 million the next year.

Yes, that's totally backward looking.

They just bump it up to whatever it's sold to and then back solve for that.

It makes no sense.

So I'm saying, look at the fair market value of the five homes that were all like four to 5,000 square feet, nice homes.

Not these little homes and cottages that sold last year.

They've all gone up by 50%.

One of them was sold twice.

So you have a sale in 2021, you have a sale in 2025.

That one actually had work done to the interior.

None of the others, as far as I know, have.

My house goes up by 100%.

And then I say, guys, I called in and I was like, is this for real?

3.8 million?

100% increase?

They're like, yep, that's it.

The comps are correct.

Then they came to the house and did some magic adjustments and all of a sudden drop it to 3.087.

I mean, I'm just telling you what I see and what I think I would sell my house for.

Okay.

I don't hear from the professor's office.

So thank you.

So I think there's a little confusion over what senior appraisal practice is.

And let's talk about the sale.

The sale that was sold after that was torn down.

The highest misuse of that property is vacant land, which was proven by the fact that it was purchased

for an absorbent amount of money actually compared to the rest of the land values that are here and it wouldn't really be compared to improved properties it would be compared to

Really, if we'd included it, it wouldn't be as an improved sale.

It would be as its highest and best use as a land sale, and it would not help the applicant at all.

Which, of course, it's only one sale, and we would never go there on one sale.

But it's not an indication of a lower value.

It's an indication of a higher value.

So, there's a lot of talk about the state law and requirements and being allowed and not allowed to leave.

What we're supposed to do is follow the standard of pre-procratic which we have done.

And I think it's a really good sign of the process working.

And I appreciate Mr. Allshay allowing us to come into his home and doing an inspection because that allowed us to update the description of his property, which is really important.

We didn't find anything wrong with our model.

What we found was our description was off on his property, and we adjusted it.

So it dropped from not 3.8, but about 3.7 million to just over 3 million because of that process.

And that's a really important part of this process, the review process, to make sure we have the correct details on how.

Once we do that, the model works really well.

and I think not just the comparables that we provide you but the comparables that he provides you all show that our model works for all of those properties.

Now any talk about

The amount of change of a property, whether it's the subject property or the comparables or how this one changed more or less than this one, that is totally irrelevant.

And I don't think the law talks about specifically how percent change

has anything to do with value, but it's not a standard appraisal practice to consider the amount of change of any properties.

It's only about comparing the sale of actual properties over the, you know, based on, you know, where your value is now.

You're using those sales to determine where your values are now.

And there was one other one I wanted to make,

Standard Practice, which just alluded me.

But I feel that, oh, for one thing about the appraisal, I absolutely agree that, you know, it's the appraiser deciding that the sales comparison approach is the appropriate approach.

Residential appraisers do not depend on the cost approach.

It's fee appraisers.

They just don't.

They do a, they include a cost approach kind of by standard, you know, practice, but they never, I dare anybody to ever find a fee appraisal on a residential home that relies on the cost approach, unless it's a very specialized property.

And I don't think Mr. Finchen would

agree with averaging those, and if he had thought that that was the appropriate way to go, he would have done that himself in the reconciliation of his appraisal.

Can you give us a little detail on that?

The dwelling lacks the details indicative of an A plus, change the grade to an A.

So we adjusted the grade down from A plus to A.

That's a big chunk right there.

We also, the dwelling was remodeled some in 2014, but showing some age.

We changed the condition from excellent to good.

Good reflects that renovations were done, but it's not as extensive.

So that is also a reduction.

And then there were some minor other changes, but this substantive change would have been the great change in the condition change.

So in terms of the grade, just looking at the comps, the grade is kind of all over the place for the different comps.

You know, I guess in the ideal world, you'd have a bunch of sales in the neighborhood of properties with the same grade.

And here you sort of have to use all the different grades and sort of figure out the difference.

It seems like part of the argument that's being presented by the homeowner here is that, you know, his property is a lower, his grade of property would sell for less than what we're appraising it at.

They're pretty good.

We haven't seen the interior of all these properties.

We've been in some of them, and we also have the MLS interior pictures that we're able to see, which is still a good indication.

It's better to get inside, but it's good to have those MLS pictures that show a lot of the extensive.

They take a lot of pictures inside these.

They do.

You know, and you can get those online.

You can just look them up on Realty.com usually.

Some of those pictures are, that is true.

That is true.

The value that that now holds, the land value, how does that compare?

You said it wouldn't help his case.

What's the actual comparison?

Exactly.

They paid and then you got to add in the cost to them as a building.

Can I ask a question there?

Sure.

Just on this point of law, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but what I put on page three is that assessments of real property shall be of fair market value.

Richard, the price when offered for sale by one who desires to not obliged to sell it and bought by one of no necessity of having it actual present value of the land with all its adaptations to general and special uses and not as prospective speculative or possible land value based on future expenditures and improvements.

at that time in 2005 or 25, and I think what you might see is in 26, when it now no longer has a parcel, everybody in your neighborhood is gonna get hammered because of that.

That's fine, but I'm not allowed to use 2026.

I'm not arguing with you.

I'm just saying, I hear what you're saying.

I actually kind of agree with you.

And 26, I think you might have, it will be.

Or 27.

Right.

I don't know if I answered your question, but essentially, you know, we have this, that property, the comparable

It's just an outlier, an extreme outlier, actually.

And we have to, in our judgment, you know, the law tells us a few things, but in our judgment, we have to determine what is usable and what is not usable.

This sale is not usable.

And it's not usable in the

I'm looking at, I'm gonna assume that these assessments, historical assessments on your page two.

So from the time that it was remodeled in 14, 11 years, the assessment went up by about what, 100%, 571 to 924.

and then you did the purchase and you know purchased it for 1.8 and next year the assessment went to 1.8 and then we've had this I mean frankly county vibe but in specific neighborhoods significant increases reasons that I would argue are

Okay.

Listen, I'm not the expert here.

I don't, you know, the models don't really seem to have a lot of bearing in reality from my perspective when you look at this historical track record.

All I'm saying is I know where I would list my house today.

I think it's backed up by all the comparables in the neighborhood.

These four homes that were used in the comp set were all small, little cottages.

They garnered a much higher price per square foot valuation because people want to live in the neighborhood.

I get that.

Because you buy a 2,000 square foot cottage, you pay a premium to be in our neighborhood.

That doesn't mean you extrapolate the price per square foot to a 5,000 square foot home.

And that's what's being done here.

And I still don't have a good answer for why if the only thing that's changed for six houses that were all sold in a four month period in 2021, which was sort of the early innings of this frenzied period, all those go up by 50%, one is sold twice, it goes up by 55%.

What has changed about mine that makes it go up by 67%?

I understand that's not your assessment value methodology.

That just doesn't make logical sense to me.

And I think the courts would have a problem with this exclusion of Fort Sanabry.

So that's really it.

I mean, all this started because I get the assessment that my house has gone from 2.5 to 3.7 million in a year.

It's like, what's going on here?

Okay, thank you.

So we have time to deliberate.

Right.

I mean, 87,000 is a lot of money, but not when you're talking

Yes, fine.

The appraisal submitted by the applicant, probably the most important piece of evidence.

That appraiser had the opportunity to use the cost approach and declined to use it and gave more weight to the comparable approach for residential house, residential home.

I think that's consistent with what the assessor's office is asking us to do.

We're saying it's a best practice.

It wouldn't make sense to me to average the amounts together, particularly if the applicant submits, it's an appraisal from the applicant, right?

Sort of the applicant has submitted that as part of its evidence.

Suppose you can overcome the evidence and say, actually I just claim it, I think this is other thing that's more persuasive, but I'm more inclined to accept the accuracy of the appraiser.

The number selected by the appraiser and the fact that it happens to line up with what the Assessor's Office, or very close to what the Assessor's Office submitted, I think would weigh in favor of the accuracy of the Assessor's Office.

I have to say some of the language used to describe the Assessor's Office's process I think is simply inaccurate.

I mean, to say that there's no conception in reality or that there's no method here, there's a very clear metric to track the method.

It's appraisal to sale ratio.

The closer to one that is, the better the method, the more accurate, precise the method.

And out of the cab, suggests that they've done quite well at that.

I think I have less of a strong view.

I'm not sure that there's a great

argument about which one is more accurate.

It's sort of hard to tell.

I'm at the same place when two professionals independently assess the property and come that close together.

I have a question, mainly just about sales comparison versus cost.

Do other, yeah, you're applying the same.

I'm surprised that he didn't say we're using the cost approach because what we do looks like the cost approach where we

We use a price or a value per square foot.

We adjust that for size.

We add some cost components for decks and stuff like that.

And we make adjustments to the square foot and then we...

It actually looks... And then there's depreciation for how old it is.

That looks like a cost approach.

It actually isn't because it's really a mass appraisal approach.

Virginia Beach, I think he mentions.

I worked in Virginia Beach.

They have a very similar process to us.

Again, it might look like a cost approach, but it's not.

So I don't know about all other jurisdictions, but they all do mass appraisal to come up with their values.

Can we go to page six of the assessor, that shows the assessor provided.

I just have one quick clarification.

I'm leaning the same way as my colleagues, but I just wanted to, I've usually asked about the grade of the property and sort of the importance of the grade.

So when I look at,

You know, the subject property is graded in A.

If I look just at the other two properties that are graded in A, the values are 2.5 and 2.2.

And I understand, you know, there's the square foot differences in the size of the law.

So there's other things going on.

Oh, certainly.

And one of the other things that will definitely affect value is the style of the home, one story versus one and a half versus two.

With the one story, there's a lot more value per square foot because it's all on, there's no efficiency of having a second floor.

So those will cause the value, not just our value, but what people will pay for it.

So the difference you see in one comparable number one in the subject is that comparable number one is a one and a half story.

In the same... Yeah, comparable four is a smaller property, and so that's the...

That's why we show all of these details in these comps.

This is cheaper than ours and my house and stuff like that.

I think the last thing I'll mention is this property sold for $1.85 million in February of 2021 and I'm not hearing the owner contest that that was fair market value, presumably it was.

But I'm sympathetic or I'm empathetic to the assessor's argument that we can't use 2021 COBs to inform the value of 2026.

The applicant is asking us to value his property today at 2.6 million or 2.8 million.

So implicit in that request is a recognition that over the last five years, the value has risen from at least 1.85 to 2.8.

So using the comps from 2021 with no adjustment would apply a sort of plainly inaccurate price per square foot.

If you adjusted all of the ones that the owner requested on the appraisal comps and the equity comps from 2021 by the price per square foot, GLA only, by 50%, it wouldn't be helpful to the argument, right?

It would suggest that we were undervalued.

And that's primarily, I think, a disagreement about methodology.

The Assessor's Office is using one year window because they believe it's the most probative of where the market is today.

I could see maybe going a little outside of that, but 2021, just from having been on this board for probably since then, it'd be hard for me to rely on those numbers and say that they were good evidence of what the value is today.

We're in the deliberating phase, so I think probably better not to continue with the rebuttal out of fairness to the other applicants.

Any other perspectives, questions?

Okay.

Is there a motion with respect to this application?

Number one.

Move to approve the assessor's figures at 3,087,800.

Yes, sir.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay.

The assessor's assessment of property AID number

3073, that's application number six, is affirmed.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

All right, we'll now call applicant number 23, property ICB K0670, our Burien,

Yuri Varshavski, and Jennifer Olson-Varshavski.

Yeah, it's probably easiest for the webcam to capture you.

Gorgeous.

Peter Lynch.

Here.

Thanks.

So listed as testifying for the applicant is also Jennifer F. Olshan-Brushovsky.

Will it just be you today, Mr. Brush?

Okay, very good.

Would you mind raising your hand and I'll swear you in?

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?

Yes.

So my property is located, it's not in the neighborhood, it's located off of Proffit Road behind another property.

The comparable properties that I sent to the office.

building what they assessed other properties around me are all either directly touching my property or adjacent to the properties that are touching my property.

And all of those properties, the houses there are comparable in size to my house.

The actual square footage in some of the houses might be listed as smaller, but they all have basements and they all have at least partially finished basements.

And when you include

That, I guess, area of the property.

It's more than my living space.

So I think they're comparable.

They're all valued significantly under what my property is valued at.

And that's my basic argument is that every single property around me or almost every single property around me is valued significantly lower than my property.

And I don't know why.

My property, my house, the condition of my house, my property,

telling me that it's an absolute dump, excuse my language, it's a rental, a rental that's been broken up into like five or six little tiny apartments and it's a huge mess that yes it should be valued much lower than my property but at the same time it affects the value of my property as well.

And my last argument is that when I bought my property, which was back in 2013, I believe it was valued by the county at that time at like around 315-ish.

The owners, the sellers at that time, I think they started out asking at like 350, down to like 330.

The property was on sale for a year and a half, could not sell.

I ended up buying it for 232.

at that time, which is a significantly under what it was valued by the county even at that time.

What year was that again?

I'm sorry.

2013.

And I believe the reason nobody wanted that property is because of the property that's right in front of me, that's significantly alone.

So that's my argument.

I assume you have the paperwork that compares.

The property in front of me, there's always trash out there, there's always debris, there's always some weird tents,

They burn trash from time to time in 50-gallon drums that I have to call fire department on them or other neighbors do because of the smell of plastic and whatever they're burning into.

Just to give you, I guess, an idea, I'm loving it good.

What's the address of that property?

2929.

2929.

And I share an entrance, right?

I share driveway entrance with them.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, anything further from the applicant?

I mean, two things I think.

on the counties.

Thank you.

Okay, that's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Varsharski.

Yeah, I don't have a lot to add.

One thing I do want to point out, it's not generally understood very well, but below grade or finished basement is not

the same value as above grade finish living area.

And sometimes, I mean, even the real estate agents, when they list properties, they'll say, oh, this is a 2000 square foot home, but it's really a thousand square feet above grade and a thousand square feet finished in the basement.

Not that the basement finish doesn't have any value, but it's just not as valuable.

So if you're comparing even the same square footage

Holmes, but some of that finishes in the basement on one and the other one isn't.

And I think that's kind of a big difference in the comparables that Mr. Brashefsky has provided, is that they're smaller above grade homes by three or 400 square feet, but they've got finish in the basement.

But again, you can see in this grid that we're adjusting, we're showing all those differences.

And even based on those differences, all of these are coming up with lower values.

which is why we've provided some different comparables that have more square footage of upgrade, similar grades to the subject and so they're a little more similar and not that, you know, I don't think that the comparables that the applicant

provided, actually proved that his assessment is too high.

I think they just proved that the model is working for those and adjusting for those differences.

And they are the lowest, they're low sales, but they're

They're not proving that we're wrong.

We also show some higher sales that actually bracket the subject below and above.

And we've got the same grade actually in all of our comparables.

And we've got larger and smaller homes above grade.

Between all of those, between the brackets of his and the brackets of ours, I believe that we're well supported for the value.

And these are the properties that he provided as comparables are comparable assessment properties.

They're not necessarily sales.

They're not recent sales.

The most recent, I think, is 2023.

And I didn't think about this at the time in the last

in the last hearing but there are rules that are generally followed by residential appraisers that you don't use a

Fee appraisers don't typically use sales of homes that are more than six months old because underwriting will not allow, they will not accept those sales.

So it's not in your state law, it's in your practice.

Now we use the entire prior year and we try to come up with, obviously, I wanted to add that in.

When I look at how the comparables are done, you're looking just at the condition of the house.

It seems like the process is sort of set up where it's hard to take into account the condition of the property that you share a driveway with.

So I'm very sensitive to the point that you're sharing, it's not just a neighboring house, you're sharing a driveway with a house that's in very poor condition.

and so I think it's a very legitimate point that if you were to try to list this house for sale that that condition of that property in front would have a pretty negative impact on what he would be able to sell his house for but it doesn't sound like that's something we're able to

This situation where the property, now forget the, this shoveled state of the property in front, but just the access of stuff, we would typically adjust the land value just for that access.

And we haven't done that.

So I would propose that that change be made.

There is a way to also adjust for, you know, additionally for the fact that it's not just access through a normal property, but possibly a distressed property.

Well, the access itself, it would just be on the land and it would, let's see, this is all one.

This is just two acres.

It would be 10% reduction on the land.

So it would cause the land to drop to 88 too.

from 98, so just under $10,000.

And what adjustment do you have in the past for distressed properties?

We've had, I remember last year we had that.

We did have one with kind of a distress, it was next to it.

It was next to it, right, yeah.

And I don't remember, do you remember, was that 5% we used or?

I think it was on the land.

I don't exactly remember.

I think this is worse than the one from last year because he had a field and he planted some trees and he didn't have to drive away and he didn't have to drop by it.

I mean, I think those are two fair points to look at.

It does, it does.

Actually, I look back in 2013, we were assessing the property at, we weren't that far off.

2013-278.

So we were above what he ended up paying for it.

But in the following year, we dropped it to $247 based on the trip.

So we were representing what we found in that sale.

Did the applicant want to make any rebuttal?

What was the evaluation of the property in front of me, the 2929 in 2013?

Because it was high back then.

It was fine or what?

I'm going by my memory right now.

Was the house in that condition?

Yes.

It was 201-6 in 2013.

What was the address on that one?

Excuse me.

So I think that my argument is that the properties directly around me are valued significantly lower than my property.

The basement argument, I get it, but also all those houses, or at least all by one, I think, have walkout basements, which I think actually

is comparable when you have finished walkout basement to normal living space.

The other argument is the county is using recently sold houses that are significantly far away from my house and there are mostly neighborhoods, which in Albemarle County significantly increases, I think, how fast you can sell your house and how much you can sell your house for.

and I don't think you can directly compare my property to a lot of the properties that County is using to compare it to the recently sold price.

And my fundamentally, my argument is that the houses around me are valued right now significantly lower than my houses and I don't understand why.

Thank you.

Are we ready to deliberate?

I guess the first thing I like to look at is on page two of the assessor's presentation is the medium AS ratio and then the coefficient of dispersion.

Am I correct on that, Pete, that 1.71 is exceptional?

It's very tight.

It's very tight, yes.

So that doesn't mean that this particular property, they did a good job on it, but as a sort of context or background, the data on this neighborhood is matching very tightly to the sale prices they'd expect to see.

So that gives me some degree of confidence in the way that this was approached.

I trust the way that the basements are done.

We've been down the rabbit hole in this a number of times and I've always concluded that it was appropriate and fair the way they value that at a different square, the square footage there is a different amount.

than the above grade pieces.

I do understand the applicant's request for adjustment based on the property next door.

It gives me a little bit of heartburn to respond to sort of operational features of the property so they could stop burning trash in 2027, right?

So that's a little bit concerning, but I do think this is distressed property and seems appropriate for some adjustment there.

It also seems like, and the assessment office agrees that the access adjustment should be made.

So I'd be in favor of that one and probably something for the

the adjacent distressed property.

I agree with that.

What does the county think about?

I mean, we've got 10% on the access.

What are we thinking?

The neighbor.

So there's several factors that we consider.

One of them is from, what we're talking about is passing past that property as you drive in.

From all, you know, from what you see in the picture, he's not looking at it from when he's at home.

So one of the things is what do they see when they're at home and they're sitting on their back porch and they're looking out?

Do they see this trash?

Or, you know, obviously you mentioned the burning, the smoke smell.

That's a little bit different.

So one aspect of it is driving past it and one aspect of it is do you see it from the house?

So if they look directly at it from his house, that would be more on the house.

I think if it was directly affecting, you know, when you're in the house or, you know, on the porch or whatever, it would affect the house.

I think it, we would probably restrict it to just the land.

It'll fix that lot.

It's really an access past that.

How big's the lot?

Two acres.

Zoom out.

Sure.

Looks like the front one's above.

What do we think the distance is?

Do you have any metric for somebody's not going to want to buy that?

I know but I mean you know that has nothing to do with whether you can see it when you're sitting on your porch or not because you can't drive by it every day.

It's going to be the first thing.

It's a tough one to yeah.

Is somebody going to want to drive by that house?

Porter of a Mile, or maybe last eighth of a mile.

Those sales are gonna be impacted by that house, and that'll filter through your data.

But I do,

Could the Assessor's Office please share more about what the various options would be to apply that?

What has been done historically or where would you find it most natural to apply?

The two things we would do to the land, definitely, and possibly it would be economic depreciation to the building.

So we would come in here, actually among the neighbors probably,

We would come in and under economic obsolescence and put 5% for neighboring property changes.

Is that just the land or the total?

That's on the building itself.

This part doesn't affect the land at all.

And then on the land, just like I made the change for the access,

which I didn't save.

10%.

10% on the land.

We would make an additional change, I'll just call it view right now, but let's say 5% there, which would, just using those numbers, would reduce the land value from, I wanna say it was 98,000

98,000 was the original number.

The land would come down to 83.8 based on using 10% for access and 5% for that view.

And then the improvement value would, the improvement value would drop 16, 340,

46.8 to 329.

The total adjustment of approximately 31,000.

That's between land and threat.

5% feels about right to me.

I think someone will feel like a $22,000 discount off of the, someone will drive past that I think for that amount of money.

That's a meaningful discount off market price.

So.

I agree with that.

And that number, Peter, again was 413-100.

I'll make a motion.

Are you ready for a motion?

I'll second the motion.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay, for applicant number 23, the motion passes to adjust the land to $83,800.

Sorry, say the land again.

$83,800.

Okay.

and then the improvements would be?

329-300.

Okay.

Well, certainly.

Thank you for your application.

Ocasio-Cortez,

And of course, we had mentioned in our article that in a case purchased by the Office of the Attorney's Office, we have that right up.

That was your value, Grace, 11.4.

Oh, I'm good with this.

You're right about the word though.

Detailed.

We don't get to bring that to the table.

We're gonna be bored of action.

I don't remember.

Glass of water at the restaurant.

But they said the reservoir right now is still at something like 98% or 99%.

They're flaring it, going quite quick.

We had to make an investment to deal with it.

James Herbert's fighting a musclefish, a fucking snail.

But at least we expanded our capacity.

Well, we could have did.

It's been a long time.

Couldn't, as well.

You could have created twice the habitat you were disturbing somewhere else.

But I will still argue there were people still around, even back then, that were actively pushing back on all types of infrastructure, road, utilities, whatever.

Not, I'm gonna say it, disingenuously.

arguing because of environmental issues when they really just wanted people to stop, they just wanted no growth at all.

And we're living in the result of that with these people complaining about the cost of their house.

Get the elected officials to vote for it, you know what I'm saying?

And you're not going to turn it around

Took 20, 30 years to get here.

Exactly.

Yeah, Cedar Lynch.

And second.

So if you want to come sit over here by.

No, no, no, no information, just what I've already.

Ready to presume?

Your team all squared away, Pete?

We are all squared away, yes.

All right, so good morning.

We're the Board of Equalization.

This is application number 18, property number 1857.

And you'll have 10 minutes to present your argument, followed by seven minutes from the assessor's office and a three-minute rebuttal if you'd like to make one.

We've been provided the materials that you submitted.

ahead of time, so this new one-page document submitted today.

And Brady, you hear what you have to say?

Good.

That's me, right?

Oh, swear a minute.

Maybe we need an office urgent for swearing.

Will there be anyone from the Assessor's?

Oh, already swearing.

You've already got it.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm, Mr. Secqui, 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?

Yes, I do.

Good morning.

My name is Ken Sekley.

I'm a retired small business person.

I live at 1232 Durret Ridge Road in Earlysville, which is the home property that we're going to talk about for the next few minutes.

First just to say thank you for your service and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about my situation and I also want to just say I want to recognize Jim Shelley of the Assessor's Office who's been out to my home several times in the past few years.

He's always been with the highest level of professionalism so I appreciate that.

So just the situation that led to me making this appeal.

My home in 2024 was assessed at $418,200, fair market value by the assessor's office.

It then underwent significant

Remodeling, at least in terms of operating kitchen and bathrooms, didn't change the footprint of the house, but recognized that there was a lot of fresh paint applied.

And the Assessor's Office came back in 2025 last year with an original assessment of 788,000.

I was expecting an increase.

I wasn't expecting anything like that increase.

So I appealed it at the time.

And the Assessor's Office just last year agreed with me

and said, yeah, we probably went too far.

Let's go to $706,600.

Not quite as much of a reduction as I had hoped, but I appreciated that and thought that was great.

Then I received my assessment for this year and we're right back up over an 11% increase back to $787,400.

basically just reverting to whatever the model calculated last year before my appeal, before my successful appeal.

So I felt that this was inconsistent and not particularly fair or a fair recommendation of fair market value.

So I took a look at some comps.

I thought the timing was important as was just discussed in the last hearing here.

And so, and especially with what the market is doing these days with the movement in interest rates and what has occurred over the last couple of years.

So the assessor provided five comps.

two from 2024 and two from the first half of 2025.

So all of those comps were well over a year old, well past that six month guideline that we were just talking about in the last hearing.

I tried to find comps that were much more timely and I provided three comps of closed sales in Earlysville from the last four months of 2025 that I think are more representative of what fair market value is.

and then on the level of home attributes, my home at 1232 Durrett Ridge, it's on a crawl space just over 2,000 square feet, two and a half baths, four bedrooms.

The assessor comps, all five of the assessor comps had finished basements versus my crawl space.

One comp had four baths, two had three and a half baths and so on.

whereas I provided comps that were of a similar or slightly greater square feet and had three baths, two similar to mine without basements.

So my conclusion is that my comps were more representative than the assessors both from certainly from a timing standpoint as well as the attributes of the of the homes themselves.

So when you look at the details of the three comps that I supplied, and I also supplied in my application, I gave some other homes just in my immediate vicinity that I don't consider comps, but I just wanted to give a flavor of the neighborhood I was in.

But my actual comps that I looked at in Earlysville, as I said, all in the last four months of 2025, and all both in terms of the closed sales price, as well as the total assessed value ranged from between about 55% up to almost 75% of the assessed value of my home.

So considerably less.

and you say well okay the one big difference might be you've got you know a few more acres of vacant land around your home and I'll say okay fine I accept the assessor's appraisal of my of my land value let's look at just the assessed value of the improvements of the home themselves on those three comps

and again you get that same 55% to about 70% of the value of my home.

So my bottom line conclusion is that I feel that the improvements of my home were assessed at a higher level than what fair market value should be.

It should actually be somewhere in the middle of that range, perhaps, of the comps that I give.

And I do accept the proposed land assessment.

So for both taking a look at what the fair market value is of the home right now as well as the past history when just last year the Assessor's Office pretty much agreed with me to a large extent.

So that's my position.

Thank you, Mr. Seckely.

Yes, sir.

So I wanted to make sure the characterization is correct.

Mr. Seckely said that we indicated that we probably went too far and that we reduced the

the assessment last year on review.

That kind of sounds like, well, we kind of felt like throwing a number at it.

And then we said, oh, well, maybe we did too much, but I did not intend.

So I just want to make sure that the board understands

that we had, just like all other properties, we had a certain description of the property.

Once we did the review, we found things that differed and that caused the value to go down.

So it was really a database change for the property.

It was still based on the same model.

It was just based on updated data for the property that we found.

So when we talk about comparables,

who were provided by the applicant are inferior mainly because of the grade.

The subject's K minus one grade is pretty much far superior to a B or C plus one or B minus one.

A B plus one, an A minus one, A, that range, B plus one is just one grade below an A minus one.

So those are pretty close.

There is a difference still to them.

And we attempted to provide just one and a half story homes to take style out of the mix.

with grades that were either, there's only one A minus one here, but all B otherwise are B plus one.

So they're as close as possible.

Yes, they all have basements and his does not as a crawl.

But we feel that, again, we feel that the comparables that he provided while lower in value than his still support the value of, or how well the,

the model works and if you look at the sales ratios they're very close to 100% and then ours kind of complement that and provide other comparables that are we believe more similar in grade and style to this property and they also have

And when I say close to 100% you know we're looking for a range between 90 and 110 and we like we like that range to be closer you know maybe two or three percent above or below 100% but you know an acceptable range in assessments is between 90 and 110 percent overall.

I do want to ask the board, you know, we talked about this last year or the year before, these grids, I think they're really good at showing the differences of the property.

No, only just to recap what I think I said in terms of comparable, selection of comparables and timing in particular as reflected in just the previous hearing.

I think my comparables are much more relevant with the timing in which they occurred.

And I think my home attribute argument holds up as well.

I just want to make sure that I'm reading this correctly.

So you acquired the property in February of 2024 and you paid $750,000?

And as I reflected in my application, I didn't feel that that was a particularly

a representative of fair market value because at the time my daughter and son-in-law had just had an infant just given birth and there was a significant health crisis where they needed our help and we needed to move to Earlysville and we needed to be close to their home.

and that there was nothing on the market at the time at all that was within 10 minutes of their home this house came out of the market and within a day we made a full price offer on that because we were driven because we there was some urgency associated with our granddaughter's health and we needed to be there for support so I recognize that that is officially a

I would add that in February 2024, that's what the market was.

Sales sold extremely fast.

What was the list price, Mr. Sackley?

It was $7.50.

Would that sale be included in your data that you used to assess everyone else's property in that neighborhood?

So the application says we did not negotiate and made a higher than list price offer of $7.50.

Do I understand correctly that list price was $7.50 and you came in at $7.50?

Correct.

I believe there was one other full price offer, but they withdrew the offer because they couldn't get financing.

That's like just over 11% increase.

So if we accept the improvement value as 400,000 roughly versus the 618 from the Assessor's Office,

Roughly that might be accurate.

I also, I think, you know, the conditions in the marketplace at that time were significantly different.

So, yeah, I guess overpaying is a subjective term, but yes, because of those conditions and our own personal situation, we recognized we were overpaying by a significant amount.

Maybe that expected, maybe even more overpaid more than we thought we were at the time.

I can understand

The hesitation to make that larger move off of what we paid, is essentially the only property within the vicinity at the time that was a freestanding.

And I can invite you to provide help to our daughter.

So yes, I can understand the hesitation for such a large move.

though I would say if nothing else, something closer to what the Assessor's Office in the fair market value was last year when they took a review look at it and landed on 706, 600.

I have a quick question for the Assessor's Office about the adjustment last year.

It was related to the grade.

Actually, that's what Jim was just telling me.

I describe this as the battle of the comparables.

The comparables are so far apart.

So I would like the applicant to tell me why the assessor's comparables are the wrong comparables.

And I'd like the assessor to tell me why the applicant's comparables are the wrong comparables.

I think we have done that, but we'll reiterate it.

I'd like to hear it just in plain language.

He can certainly add to this, but he stated that our comparables have basements in his dozen.

There might be others, if you see one, must raise.

And his comparables are lower quality homes, which would make them worth less.

I would say from the assessor standpoint they, you know, leaning pretty heavily on this subjective quality of construction.

I mean the remodeling that was done with our house that cosmetically it probably looks good but you know it wasn't as fundamental a change as

as it might appear.

But beyond that, I think in terms of home attributes, having finished basements, which are in many cases walkouts, very nice adding very high quality square footage to the home, maybe not the official total, but still

Good comps there from the assessor side whereas our home has a crawl space and then just general quality the home in terms of number of baths and that sort of thing the assessor's comps are all

at the high end.

And then most importantly, or perhaps most importantly is timing.

My comps are all in the last four months of 2025, so they fall into that range that the Assessor's Office just cited in the previous hearing of a six month window.

The Assessor's Office had to reach back to 2024 to get two other comps and then two others from earlier in 2025 in the first half of the year.

and timing is very, very important in terms of fair market value in the current market.

Thank you.

We're ready to deliberate.

Who'd like to start?

I'll take some easy ones.

Oh sorry, the owner comps, the grade D. I mean that's something like 12 steps off the grade assigned to this house.

To me, it's not a measure of degree.

It's just totally dissimilar things.

So I don't find those particularly persuasive.

C1 is kind of in a similar bucket for me.

Seems like B plus 1 is better and closer.

So I'd have some preference for that.

B is not discounting it.

But B minus 1 is getting pretty far off.

I don't know what the volume of the work was, but the consumer homes bought it in 2023 for 400 fish and gold for 750.

I think it was probably more than paint, probably a pretty significant update.

The age of the homes is also, I think, relevant here.

Some of the homes provided by the applicant are significantly older.

comp three on the market comms and then there was some on the owner provided as the rules.

I guess that's 1949 for comp number five.

I think it's just really tough for me to get past the fact that this sold at arm's length for $750,000 in 2024.

The market, as I understand it, is not as hot now as it was then, but I think values have generally risen since then.

So to lower it by the amount the owner I was requesting personally just

I think it's hard to

arguing that he bought it for $7.50 at $24 and it's worth less than that.

I mean, the assessor agreed with him last year.

Well, yeah, I'm saying the values haven't gone up in the last year.

Not 11% in the last year, no.

Yeah, I guess

We really can't use the percentage increase as a kind of a gut check on value because the last years could have been underset, right?

We've seen some where we had the assessment set at 900 and it sold for 1.8.

They are occasionally wrong and that's why we're fairly expressly not permitted to rely purely on the increased percent.

The fact that the 49% finished renovation, that's not even, that's valued at zero as of today, is that right?

Oh, he's doing an addition to the property now?

Yeah, that's what I understand.

Yeah.

Yeah, which is not complete.

So we're not adding any value for that car.

but which would be added next year.

Right.

The addition is approximately 200 square feet of addition to a first floor bedroom, no additional bathrooms, increasing the footprint of the house by 200 square feet but that's next year's.

That's not factored into this at all.

Not as of January 1st.

Well, I'll correct that.

It'll be factored into it as soon as the new construction is done.

Thank you.

Mr. Shelley, can I just ask you, do you feel like the A1 grade is well supported?

For the subject?

Yes.

Actually, yeah.

It was lowered when the renovations were first completed and then the sale occurred.

Yeah, I guess just kind of gathering my thoughts here.

I don't find the owner's comparables to be a closer match across the multiple fields here.

I find the Assessor's Office's comparables to be a closer match than the additional data point of the $750,000 sale price.

I think sort of my view

One question I have for the assessor, looking at the assessor comps, if you look at comp number one and comp number three, the price per square foot

here that subject home is 291 for those which seem to be pretty comparable, 274 and 269.

Well, that would be explained for, first of all, comp number one, the fact that it's a B plus one.

So the lower grade would lower that rate per square foot.

The larger square footage would also make the per square foot amount lower.

In comp number three, it's a little bit smaller.

It's the same grade.

It's all above grain.

Correct.

And they both, if you notice the base rate at the top, they both started the same place.

There's something else I'm missing here.

Basically the same age.

That's much of a difference, so I don't, I can't place what the difference is based on right now.

70 cent, what is that, 72?

77 cents?

I don't know.

Oh, you're talking about the base rate at the top.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're looking at the price at the bottom being 30, $22 different per square foot.

I don't have an answer for you that's obvious because I'm building is that calculated in there that was a different neighborhood oh it's a different neighborhood yes so so the neighborhood factors each neighborhood will be adjusted differently the subjects neighborhood make sure I'm still in yes actually is not adjusted

These are all the things we put on here.

This is market area six.

And the neighborhood vector is one as well.

Sorry, I can't answer that question.

It's a $945,000 recent sale, right, on a smaller parcel, about the same square footage.

using a basement to make up that square footage.

And the outbuilding.

If I'm reading it right, that 945 includes 162 for the basement and 77 for the outbuilding.

So what's that?

715, 720.

Sub-area totals will include not just the basement but the bathrooms and

Correct.

Then it will go, it would take two pages to include all that detail.

Right, so if you have a big valuation of sub areas that would drive GLA down, right, as compared to normal interior finish space, which is what we observe between the subject and column number three, those are being valued differently

That's explanatory of the 291 versus 269 if the interior square footage is allocated across lower value subareas.

Any further questions?

I'm running up against the next applicant.

We want to do any more digging on this one, set it aside and deliberate at the end.

We're ready to proceed to deliberate.

I guess I would kind of like to ask the Assessor's Office to try to run down whatever the room one is and the numbers.

That's not an answer that we typically get.

Typically, it's

So I would propose that we just set this one aside and let them do the further investigation and circle back on it.

And that would also allow us to stay on schedule with the next applicant.

All right.

So thank you for your presentation, Mr. Seckely.

I hope this one in advance in terms of deliberation and delivery when we finish hearing the other applicants' appeals.

And I hope by that time we'll have more information from the Assessor's Office on that one open question.

You're welcome to stay for that outcome, but you don't need to, and we wouldn't need any further information from you.

that outcome for some of what is sometime later today.

Yes, if we can find space in between, if any of the other presentations wind up earlier than expected, which they often do, we'll turn it back to this one, but I don't know when it will be.

And probably the best safest plan would be to do the deliberation at the conclusion of the other applications.

I'm committed to picking up my granddaughter, so I appreciate the careful consideration.

And would also just say, you know, I made an ask here that might be beyond what's comfortable, but I would also point towards what the Assessor's Office cited.

The fair market value was just a year ago, and they made a similar adjustment as a possible landing point.

Whatever the outcome, thank you for the...

Thank you very much.

You'll receive a letter reflecting our decision.

Next application is application number 26, committed by Christopher and Janet Battle.

Property ID 16553.

Is there anyone here on behalf of Christopher and Janet Battle?

So they're allocated 30 minutes.

Yes.

We're the Board of Equalization.

We've had access to the applicant packet that you submitted.

Looks like slides maybe.

And yes, if you're going to give testimony today, I'll ask you to be sworn in.

And I don't think we've sworn you in.

Will you remind me of your name?

I'm not sure we met.

Okay, so Mr. Batto, and Mrs. Mixon, if you just raise your 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.

So Mr. Batto, you have up to 10 minutes to present an argument.

There will be a seven-minute period for the Assessor's Office to present their

I think it's only four pages.

Pretty easy.

and so we are requesting of the VOE you know fair market value for our land and building and that's all we're asking so just to give a little history here last year we went through also an assessment review

The property was visited by assessor staff, took pictures inside and outside, and we all came to agreement that the fair value was $468,000.

This year, we got a significant increase of 13% for previous decrease.

From our perspective, we were trying to figure out what was going on.

As we look at the value, as we see for comparable properties, we didn't see any change really in 2025.

So that really got us wondering what the heck is going on.

We made no material changes.

There were really no changes whatsoever that we made to any of our property.

So I'll take you through on the next couple of pages what we believe are comparable sale transactions.

Our property, our proposed value is actually a premium to the comps in all ways.

and it's also consistent with what we've seen out there of really no price appreciation in our market.

So one other thing I would add is when we were speaking with the Assessor's Office, someone from the staff had said that there's some note that was put in our file, and that was that there's some outdoor fireplace that was not included on there.

I just want you to be able to use your time on things that are gonna be most impactful for you.

Okay.

Okay, we'll deal with that, hopefully not next year, but in any event, just going out to page two, these are the properties that sold in our neighborhood, Western Ridge.

I think this is the set of potential comp properties.

These are, the first five of them are three, four, five,

Five of them are two-story properties.

Our property is a one-story house, similar to and very comparable to the last Autumn Hill Court property.

The price per square foot works out to a median of $229 per square foot for all of these properties.

On the next page, I really focus in on, I think there is a value, the true comp is really one story.

I understand I've got a one story, so on a price per square foot, I'm going to be higher than a normal two story.

Rather than just focus everything on the two-story, although, and I'll show you on the next page, our evaluation, which is consistent, which is identical to last year, we've got a significant bump in premium to all the two-story guys.

On the third slide, this is really the true comparable property for us.

I highlight the condition and the grade and the beds and bath were identical.

There is no difference in bed, bath,

Condition or grade.

This is all from the assessor's, you know, parcel card information.

So any suggestion from anyone that will hold on here, you know, we understand the quality is a little bit different.

That's just not the case.

If that is the case, then that really goes to the integrity of assessor's data that are on all the parcel cards.

So just drilling down, the only difference in this property and my property, we actually are on streets right behind each other, is the size.

There's no difference.

The houses look identical.

They have an extra room in it.

And so they just sold, this property just sold in June.

and it sold at $499,000.

That was $264 a square foot.

Our property that we're requesting is the same assessment we had last year at $468,000, which is $283 a square foot.

That's a 7% premium to that sale transaction that happened.

And it's identical condition, grade, bed to bed.

The only difference is size.

So I think we're being very fair there.

So we're 7% premium to the sale transaction that happened for, that was the true comp.

We're 21% premium on a value per square foot to, if you look at all the sale transactions in the neighborhood.

The last page in here was just looking at, just trying to look at, well, hey, maybe do we miss something?

And what was going on in Crozet with single-family new homes?

and New Homes is just kind of a barometer as to what's going on in the market.

And according to realcrozetva.com, you know, in December of 2025, they said about 35% of the closings in Crozet are new construction.

So that's pretty significant number.

And they also said the value of the new home closings in Crozet, the median price was actually slightly down.

So there was no appreciation or depreciation really.

So we think, we believe that we've got a very high confidence level, there's certainty, that our proposed fair market valuation is correct.

That's the assessment that was done last year when staff came out, they took pictures inside and outside.

There's been no change in the market.

We've got the comp sale transactions to support that.

We're 7% to the pure comp that actually traded right behind us.

Wouldn't you agree that new home sales is a separate segment of... Oh, absolutely.

It's nothing other than what's going on in the marketplace sale.

But there could have been a different size or quality of product brought to the market in 2026 to produce a median that was lower.

That's compared to properties like yours that are 20, 30 years older.

There's been a lot of talent.

Yeah.

So I guess the question is like,

I think most persuasive is actually the comparable sale transaction.

Okay, I think I agree.

And in particular, you're talking about in the comp number one.

So it's a one-story, slightly larger lot, it's $20,000 more in terms of land value.

And you're at a slightly lower price per square foot, and we're looking at what's on the assessors.

So you're suggesting that when you look at the assessor's value for COP number one, they're coming up with 578, but it actually sold for 499.

That's exactly what we're saying.

And I understand how the CAMMA model works.

I know it's really expensive.

The computer-assisted mass assessment software, it's really expensive.

I get it, several hundred thousand dollars.

Comp number one is the only comp.

This is a question for the assessor's office.

That makes it tough.

OK.

Anything further from you, Mr. Battle?

Not at this point.

OK.

Yes.

OK. Mr. Lynch, so we, a couple of points.

We don't feel that comp number one is a good sale for a property.

It's not a normal arms-length transaction

It is very rare that you see as is in a listing, and if you do, it's really a red flag for problems.

The agents are always like, oh, this is the greatest house, and all of you have wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

As is is that big red flag.

So that's kind of one point.

Indications from the agent that this house was inferior and had some problems.

So the sale price reflected that.

That's not a big surprise.

We do not believe that is an indication of this value.

We also haven't had an appeal or an review request from the applicant.

I mean, the owner of the property who paid for it, which is

I wonder if any of that would be on the test of 578.

There's a lot of kind of misunderstanding when we get around the reassessment time where there would be information in the news about sales are down or sales are flat.

And quite often, they're talking about the number of sales.

There are less transactions.

They're the same amount of transactions as before, not necessarily the amount of value.

The amount of value is increasing from year to year.

Westman Ridge is definitely going up.

The values go up.

The only way really to measure how much values are going up is to compare the assessment of a property in the year itself to how much it sold for.

So in order to get that property up to what it sold for, what does it take in the model to make that happen?

It's the adjustment in that model to reflect the proper sales ratios for those sales that determines how much that neighborhood has gone.

And this neighborhood definitely has changed since last year.

Nothing else has changed in our description of the property since last year.

We haven't changed anything on review.

Is that correct?

OK. All right.

So somebody answered, did we change anything on the description of this property this year?

No.

No.

On review.

No.

OK.

So the only change represented in the change of value is the market share.

So unfortunately, I wish we had more one-story sales in the neighborhood.

And... Do you happen to have any one-story sales for 2020?

And we can answer that in a minute.

I have a question for you.

Mr. Battle said that the market was flat in that neighborhood.

You're saying it was not flat.

I'm saying it was not flat.

We do have a number.

Yeah, a minor difference in these subdivision lots isn't measurable in value.

And I do have an answer.

It's in the write-up at the beginning.

The average increase for the subject neighborhood is $1,500.

We walk you through your base value per square foot.

Rowland, one-story, two-story, story and a half.

How do you compensate that?

The base rate.

You have 1,000 square feet of one-story house.

How does this system deal with that?

We're getting about the neighborhood itself right now.

When we first start the analysis reassessment, we're looking at just one story houses that have sold in that year up to the time we do that.

We do this around September.

And then we look at all the two stories, and we look at all the one and a half stories.

And we adjusted the rate, let's say, from 140 to 150 in order to get

All of those one story sales do come up to the 100% mark or close to the 100% mark.

We live a little bit for other things to adjust.

And so that's how we adjust for each one of those different styles.

So you're adjusting that?

Yes, and then the next step will, one of the later steps will be the neighborhood itself having its own factor.

Correct.

Even though we don't have one-story sales in the neighborhood that we used, we have one-story sales throughout the county, and then we start at that county-wide level at style-wise, and then we come in

It's unfortunately distressed.

tried to do good, but I can't see.

Apparently they didn't run a camera there.

That would be a really interesting process.

You run cameras everywhere.

I mean, have you looked at that house from the outside?

What do we know about it?

I guess probably the primary question.

The description from the listing and the agent.

I missed that point.

Oh, so, well, generally, the fact that it was sold as is talks about condition.

They are, they are.

The minus one is not condition.

The minus one is quality.

We're expecting that the quality of this house was built exactly the same quality as the subject.

So the minus one does not address condition.

It does not.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Average and average.

So average is the condition.

Yes, I'm sorry.

So the subject property and this autumn hill.

Is it accurate to say though that what we're talking about here is slicing it too fine for the increments of your, something like the condition field, right?

Like you might make a note that the hardwood floors would be replaced, but unless I was married with something else, you wouldn't have made a change to the field on the comp.

Well, what we're talking about is the condition at the time of the sale.

I think I understand.

I guess I'm trying to principle charitable interpretation of the applicant's argument that the best version of his argument is they've got one really, really good comparable.

You guys say that it's overvalued because it was a stress sale, but there ought to be some adjustment that if you had perfect information,

The price that it went to, right?

So like, yes, this was 15% over the sale price.

But what was it about the property that could have been adjusted and the data?

structure or scheme or whatever.

It would have been the condition.

Okay.

You think that would have been accurate?

If the condition as of January 1st was the same as the condition at the time of the sale,

Then it should have been adjusted down to fair or poor.

I see.

Yes.

And that would have reduced that lower.

I would have to it would be I can't say exactly without actually changing it.

I could certainly do that.

But so it's kind of a necessary.

who still have to look at the two different periods.

So our data on the property may be correct now as of the condition in January 1st, but we looked at the sale at the time.

I see.

You bucketed it as a not a useful comp because of the extraneous factors at the time it was made, set it aside, and now you're recapturing that piece of, you went and looked at it, the data you entered about that sale in response to the applicant's submission?

Correct.

I see.

Correct.

OK.

So that's helpful that we're not sort of

painting it now with a certain set up that that was all done previously.

I guess I've gotten those in the mail, those requests for information, my daughter sold a property.

Got it.

Get ready for deliberation comments.

Yes, please go ahead.

I was not aware of what the Assessor's Office was going to do until I requested, seeing what their analysis was going to be, the review.

So that's why this page is not in your notes.

So first off, I take a significant exception to the statement, I think, from the Assessor's Office that

The condition and quality may have been changed since January 1st of this year in the parcel notes.

I created my analysis within the last six weeks, four weeks, and I use the notes that were in the GIS system, the parcel card information.

If the assessor is actually changing condition and quality based upon hearsay of what's in a brokerage listing, that scares the living daylights out of me.

That just puts into, that questions the integrity of anything that is in the assessor next to them for any property.

But anyway.

Why wouldn't you send your staff and take pictures and do it all the way that you did for me?

You did two years of thorough inspection in sight now.

I think it's unreasonable expecting to do that to every single property that sells in the county.

If you're saying that the condition is average, you better have a basis for it.

I'm sorry, we didn't visit the property.

I want to correct that.

We visit all sales.

So if they've changed this in the last four weeks, then they did, but whatever.

So one of the things I wanted to look at is, you know, looking at the assessed value at beginning of 2025 to the actual sale value of these sale comps.

And I think this is kind of interesting in that if you look at it, the median for all of them was the assessed value was 0.87 to the sale value.

The CAMMA model was way off on Western Ridge.

And all these properties were, you know, under assessed except for, you know, our true comp, the Autumn Hill Court one.

That's the whole reason why they have to, you know, the state law requires us to be at fair market value.

I get it.

You have to, you know, increase the assessments based on the sale transactions.

However, you know, you're way off.

And then looking at the 26 model, you might say, well, the median is at 1.0.

Well, that's great.

You got huge dispersion there.

But, you know, unfortunately, with the one story, you got a negative bias in there.

The sale transaction was at 499.

and you can't say, I mean saying that that's not, it was not a willing buyer and a willing seller and the condition and the quality are identical.

You can't say that that's not the value and it's at a 1.16.

If I understand correctly, the assessor's desire is to have the assess to sale be plus or minus two or 3%.

Not 16%.

It's way off.

You know, our request is to, you know, give us exactly fair market value, which is what it was last year.

I mean, do you trust the staff when they came out last year and they looked at everything and were consistent with our comp?

Or do you trust a CAMO model that I just showed you

It was not correct.

It should be plus or minus two or three percent on a given year because they're reassessing every year.

So there's no reason for it to be materially off.

And there was no big price appreciation last year.

It's not like they had, you know, that that was challenging them.

So, you know, the CAMMA value, it's not fair market value.

You know, I think everyone agrees that, you know, with one sale transaction, you know, the CAMMA model probably doesn't have enough data or it hasn't been worked properly.

So we're just asking to be, unless you don't believe the staff last year of the value, I think I trust the staff last year more than I trust a CAMMA value, CAMMA model that I showed you off of their assessment for 2025 on all the properties, the median was 0.87.

It should be plus or minus two or three.

It should have been 98.

That's actually you're arguing against your position there.

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

They did under assess.

They did.

They actually had the Autumn Hill one proper and it sold for exactly that.

But then the model didn't change.

How is there bias in the model?

I guess that's a part of your argument.

So you want obviously the CAMMA model to be close to 1.0, right?

The Assessor's Office is full, right?

And they have different incentives than us.

Our incentive is for this particular property.

We're trying to nail that.

1.0.

Mr. Mayo, I think what's being missed here is timing, right?

We determined the 2025 assessments in 2024.

So this is exactly what I was going to, when Mr. Norford asked me how much the neighborhood went up, this is what I was thinking.

I said 15.3% increase.

It was because of this 87% median at the time the property sold that we had to increase the neighborhood that much to get up to the 100%.

So what he's showing here is exactly what we're supposed to be doing.

Observe differential adjustment.

Well I think there's way too much dispersion obviously in the 25 assessment to the sale values in 25.

And here you still have, you've got Autumn Hill that the Assessor's Office keeps on trying to say that although the buyer and seller paid $4.99, they really paid $5.78.

We were obsessed properly.

I'm saying that their model has bias in it against one story.

That's the issue.

I'm the one to tell you, yes, they under-assessed, yes, the model didn't work for last year.

That's why they have to do this.

I agree, they have to do it.

However, you still have to follow state law.

It's fair market value.

So I think the Assessor's Office is, I think we all agree that two-story homes increase substantially in your neighborhood.

and your concern is that that same increase shouldn't apply to your house or it's systematically biased against your house.

But I think the Assessor's Office is using one-story houses elsewhere in the county to sort of take that into account.

And so if we follow the thread of your argument, you're sort of arguing that all one-story houses in the entire county

No, all I'm talking about is Western Rich.

The model could be phenomenal.

Western Rich is not being used in isolation to value your property.

It's an interlinked model that's informed by everything else.

The idea that they're incapable of adjusting for a one or two story house, to me it's sort of facially unbelievable.

You know, I mean, the assessor's office has said that was a distress sale, which makes it not a good comp.

Right.

Right.

Okay, then.

Mr. Patel is saying that the board agrees, and I agree, and I don't agree, and I don't think the board necessarily.

so that you can speak for yourself.

I'm sorry about that.

Don't wanna put words in your mouth.

My valuation is going off of sale values, not going off of what was something assessed for last year.

When I'm buying a property, I don't look at the assessor's value for that property.

I'm looking at what are the other properties selling for?

Am I paying a fair price for it?

If I could comment, I find this one very difficult to analyze because of the lack of true comparables.

The difference between the one story and the two story is a key factor and the trying to assess what does as is mean and how does that impact the sale price of the only one story comparable we have.

So this becomes difficult to analyze.

So if I could speak just kind of

voice what I'm thinking.

It does not seem reasonable to have no increase from one year to the next.

That hasn't happened in anything we've deliberated on as long as I've been on the board, which is my second year.

So the request to keep it at 468,000 to me does not seem reasonable compared to what we've looked at before.

When I look at the one story comparable that was sold for 499, it's average to average, B minus one to B minus one.

So how do you determine the value of as is?

I'm gonna take a wild guess.

So let's say the as is is $30,000.

So that means that would have sold for 530.

So if that's the best comparable at 5.30, it's also about 10% larger.

So it would seem somewhere between 4.68 and 5.30 as my boundaries.

Exactly where in there?

I don't know.

Yeah, my only thing for suggestion for the word to consider is

We are at our proposed value, which obviously we're asking for it not to be increased because last year I think it was over-assessed.

It still represents a 7% premium to the sale value that took place on Autumn Hill and a 21% premium.

How big of a premium do I have to pay for a one story throughout the entire county?

And if the model is actually doing that, can the Assessor's Office tell us, what does the model say?

Mr. Friedman, I can answer your question from earlier.

If we were to put the comparable one story in poor condition, it would be 464 would be the assessor.

If we had it in fair condition,

532 as opposed to the current value of 578.

So that's the effect of condition we have on that.

Based on how the model is built.

is that property?

I also want to tell you that out of the 182 parcels in this neighborhood, their own nine one stories.

Well, not only that, but the comparables are at least 500 square feet larger.

And in many cases, a thousand square feet larger.

It is difficult, yes.

Yeah, so and just to comment on that, we're not determining, we're only determining part of the value change or the model change on the two stories in the neighborhood, and that's the neighborhood change.

And that's only if we change the neighborhood adjustment.

So again, I still go back to on the low end 468, on the high end 530, somewhere in between, I'm not skilled enough to say where in between.

So I'm a compromiser in general, halfway in between would be 500,000.

500,000 for what?

Go ahead.

So right now the value of the subject property is 530.

Can I ask?

So going back to the comp model,

only one that's a one star.

You said if you were to take, right now you've got it at average, but if you want to make an assumption about what you described in the listing agent's information.

If it was fair, it'd be 532.

If it was poor, it'd be 460.

I believe that we're still not able to get to it.

Right?

So

So can I ask you was a note here that there's some updates, new appliances, new vanities, but nothing else is mentioned.

Is it fair to say that everything else was in the original 1997 construction condition?

Do you agree with that, Mr. Patel?

Yes, we didn't really change much.

We painted, obviously.

It was a hoarder that was there, but it was all, you know, you could have said the same thing about ours being as is.

You know, we paid cash and- You have the original hardwood floors.

Yep.

which was very inexpensive and is not a lot of money.

That's the only, we did not do anything in the kitchen.

If you ask my wife, it's awful.

I mean, the colors don't match.

Yes, it's granite, but it's the wrong, the colors.

Be recorded here.

Yeah, yeah.

But no, the refrigerator is way too big for the space.

It does not look good.

The cabinets are awful.

The drawers, you know, it needs to be fully gutted.

The average condition in our model is basically as it was built.

So if we think that's true though, probably the other sale gets average and we're really just trying to decide whether we out of the box discard that comp or whether we try and use it and discount it to some degree.

Yes.

So I think you have three things to consider.

Do you discount that sale as not a good sale like we have?

Do you believe that at the time of the sale, it really should have a lesser condition?

Therefore, it would indicate a lower value between $461 and $530.

And then how does that affect the subject, if at all?

But I think those are the things for you to consider.

Yeah, and I think just thinking through it, I mean, you can, as a professional appraiser said, it's not a good sale.

We can still decide that it's probative to us, although I think we're informed by good practice there.

I guess the part that bothers me about discarding is it just doesn't seem that distressed, you know, as is in the listing.

It's not like a sort of a hoarder situation or a gutted property.

So I'm a little reluctant to throw it out when it seems like we owe, there just aren't, there isn't another good one story.

If we believe so.

It seems like we have imperfect information about as it is.

Maybe by the same building.

I think so.

The problem is the condition.

If the 1041 Autumn Hill Court was fair, but his was average,

Yeah.

And I mean, the difficulty I'm having is the assessed value for the 1054

Yeah, it is.

I mean, but the model was sort of valued in it.

If we take the collective of the information we have,

What we've been told is the model was under assessing all of the properties in that neighborhood.

And for Autumn Hill, it was actually slightly over assessing, but it's because it was a distress.

So it was almost as if the model was

valued all the properties as if they were somewhat distressed.