Duties

What the Assessor of Property Office Does

The assessor's office primary responsibility is to find the fair market value of your property, so that you may pay only your fair share of the taxes. To afford all the services you enjoy, taxing agencies must levy taxes. The sum of the monies needed each year, by all the taxing agencies, determines what is called the tax rate. This tax rate is applied to your property's assessed value.

See Us First

If your opinion of the value of your property differs from the appraiser's, by all means come in and discuss the matter with us. We will be glad to discuss any questions you may have about the appraisal.

What is Market Value?

Finding the market value of your property involves discovering the price most people would pay for it in its present condition. It's not quite that simple, however, because he has to find what this value would be for every piece of property, no matter how big or small. But it dosen't stop there. He has to do the whole thing over again, because the market value of almost everything changes from one year to the next--as we all know. This is done so that those of us who want the advantages of having schools, fire and police protection, and other benefits (which means just about all of us), can absorb our fair share of the cost, in proportion to the amount of money our individual property is worth.

How the Assessor Goes About His Job

To find the value of any piece of property the appraiser must first know what properties similar to it are selling for, what it would cost today to replace it, how much it takes to operate and keep it in repair, what rent it may earn, and other dollar factors affecting its value, such as the current rate of interest charged for borrowing money to buy or build properties like yours. Utilizing these facts he can then go about finding the property's value in three different ways. The first way is by comparing your property to others which have sold recently. These prices, however, must be analyzed very carefully to get the true picture. One property may have sold for more than it was really worth because the buyer was in a hurry and would pay the price. Another may have sold for less money than it was actually worth because the owner needed cash right away. He was willing to sell to the first buyer who made him an offer. Using this approach--comparing the selling prices of properties similar to yours--the appraiser must always consider such overpricing or underpricing, to arrive at a fair valuation of your property. A second way to value your property is based on how much money it would take, at current material and labor costs, to replace your property with one similar. If your property is not new, he must also determine how much it has depreciated. The third way is to evaluate how much income your property would produce if it were rented like an apartment house, a store, or a factory. The appraiser must consider operating expenses, taxes, insurance, maintenance costs, and the return most people would expect on your kind of property.

Why Assessed Values May Change From Year To Year

When market value changes, naturally so does assessed value. For instance, if you were to add a garage to your home, the assessed value would increase. However, should your property be damaged by fire the assessed value would decrease. The appraiser has not created the value; he simply has the legal responsibility to discover it as it exits and appraise your property accordingly, since people make value by their transactions in the market place.

Assessed Value and the Tax Rate

The assessor's office has nothing to do with the total amount of taxes collected or how the tax rate is set or how it is spent.

In a nutshell, the appraiser first reviews all the property to be assessed. He then values it. To do this he is constantly searching... and digging... for significant facts to accumulate and analyze in order to estimate... the Fair Market Value of your property.