Clearly, Suffolk officials only see local property owners as piggy banks that support otherwise ridiculous spending. Being a municipal official only means
continuing to throw money that doesn't exist at problems that never get solved "without ever having to say you're sorry"! They can't help themselves because
the public isn't mad enough to hold them accountable. Does the public have the authority to insist that the Board of Equalization establish weekend hours to
meet with the vast majority of the public who do hold jobs and have to take annual eave to argue with their assessments? Is it too much to ask that Suffolk
officials living off public taxation arrange their working schedules to meet with the public when we're available to meet with them? Or is this just part of the
game where Suffolk's customer service can be summed up under the motto "We're not satisfied until you're not satisfied!"? In VA, the real estate assessment you get each year in the mail represents the estimated fair market value of your property. But this doesn't really mean much when you consider that city assessors get to pick and chose the "fair market value" sales they have to consider in coming up with property assessments. So as residential property duress sales, foreclosures, and lender "take backs", are not considered "arms-length" transactions under Virginia law, the municipal assessors get to exclude such sales when generating annual assessments on homes which by any measure will result in a highly inflated assessment value for the entire community!
Home Resales Tumbled 7.2% in January and of the 5.05 million overall U.S. home resales over the past year, 38% were considered distressed sales, a category that includes foreclosures. And that rate is down from late 2008 and early 2009 when distressed sales accounted for 45% to 50% of all home resales. So will Suffolk be forced to explain this to area property owners? That these homes were in fact sold at the highest price the seller could get at the time-but assessors get to ignore them as not being representative of the homes values simply because these forced transactions tend to be based more on the loan amount than on some mythical "market value" that the seller obviously couldn't get at the time of sale?? And since 1 and 4 homes in Tidewater are "under water," (mortgage amount is greater than the homes value today), and if this is the game municipal assessors are playing, why wouldn't folks simply skip out on their loans and walk away? Municipalities constantly add insult to injury by taxing homes at values they can not be sold for!
George H. Mears ME, MBA
3 comments:
Linda and her band of progressives are going to continue to push their agenda of make sure we continue to be the Nanny City. They will use all means available to promote their agenda including underhanded tactics such a misrepresenting property values. It is unfortunate the only option available is to start holding Tea Parties at city hall until they they decide to change their agenda and realize that we are in a recession and raising taxes by misrepresenting property values. Thanks for bringing this one up.
I just opened my assessment from the city of Suffolk and to my wondering eyes came the same assessment I had the past two years, What happened to the reduction of 5% ?
I just got my assessment and it is the same also. Why don't the 37,000 households in Suffolk head down to assessor's office and explain this ... oops ... that would require telling the truth. Gee only 317 foreclosures this year ... sounds like Suffolk is the place people want to live and have their children attend our schools where they will receive a world class education.
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