Latest news with #propertyassessment
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Property assessments up 7.5% in Daviess
Inflation is causing property assessments in Daviess County to soar. Rachel Pence Foster, Daviess County's property valuation administrator, says property assessments are up 7.5% this year. That's the sixth straight year that assessments have grown by 5% or more. And the most one-year increase in decades. If nothing changes, city and county governments and school districts will get an increase in the amount of taxes collected without raising their rates. And home owners will pay more in taxes. PVAs are required to assess property at its fair-market valued. They do not set tax rates. The county is divided into four quarters and one quarter has its property reassessed each year. This year, it was the area south of Parrish Avenue and east of Frederica St. Foster said homes in that area may have seen an increase of 10%, 22%, 35% or more. 'This new assessment was an increase over a four-year period and the numbers in this article are for the entire county as a whole for one year,' she said. 'Three-fourths of the county and city was not in the re-assessment area. The increases also include all new home sales.' When property is sold, it is reassessed at the sale price. And new buildings are assessed when they are completed. In dollar terms, assessments this year increased by $594 million. That's up from $436.28 million last year. The total value of all taxable property in Daviess County is now $8.5 billion. That's up from $7.89 billion last year. Realtors say the problem is a shortage of homes on the market for the past five or more years. Supply and demand means houses will sell for more money with demand for them rising. Residential property up 8.1%Foster said residential property values were up 8.1% or $412.9 million to a total of $5.5 billion. Last year, it increased by $320.99 million. Foster said the value of commercial property was up $151.5 million — 6.9% — to $2.3 billion. Last year, it was up $33.7 million. And the value of agricultural property was up $29.7 million or 5.2% to a total of $600.7 billion. Last year, it was up $81.57 million. The number of $1 million — or more — homes continues to climb. In 2021, there were only six. Last year, there were 11. And this year, Foster said, there are 19. That's just the homes, not any land other than yards. Kentucky allows people who are 65 and older or disabled to lower the assessed value of their homes by $49,100 under the Homestead Exemption Act. The amount increases every two years. Foster said this year there are 11,023 homes that have qualified for the exemption — up from 10,820 last year. That breaks down as 10,207 for age and 816 for disability. Foster said the exemption lowered the value of those homes by $534.9 million. That's up from $495.8 million last year. Government buildings, churches and certain nonprofits don't pay taxes. That took $1.75 billion off the tax rolls — down from $1.78 billion last year. People can check their assessments — and their neighbor's — on the PVA's website — The site also has a tax calculator that lets people see roughly what their property taxes will be this year — if the rates don't change.
CBC
08-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Calgary sees surge in calls over property assessments, modest rise in actual complaints
If you had a case of sticker shock when you opened up your property assessment this year, you're far from alone. The City of Calgary received an eye-popping number of calls from citizens in 2025 who wanted to review the city's estimate of their property value, which affects how much property tax they'll owe. (But not always how people might think — more on that in a moment.) At first glance, the number seems huge: 10,762 calls during the city's customer review period for annual assessments. That's more than double the 4,558 calls the city received during last year's review period. But, unlike last year, the majority of the calls in 2025 were resolved without escalating to a formal complaint being filed with the Assessment Review Board. Only 31 per cent of this year's calls led to formal complaints, compared to 61 per cent last year. A total of 3,378 complaints were filed this year, for both residential and non-residential properties, which represents 0.56 per cent of all properties in the city. That's also up from last year's mark of 0.48 per cent, but it's not as dramatic of an increase as the sheer number of calls. Average residential assessment up 15% Acting director of assessment Daniel Lidgren said property values in Calgary rose significantly last year, and residential assessments across the city were up by 15 per cent on average, which likely came as a surprise to many people who weren't following the real estate market closely. He figures that might explain the surge in people calling about their assessments but then ultimately choosing not to file a formal complaint. "For a lot of people it may have been a sticker shock or a lack of awareness of the true change in the market," Lidgren said. "So I'm very hopeful that, for a large portion of the people that called in, we were able to show them and explain the sales that happened on that street or in their neighbourhood that defined the assessment, which basically satisfied them so they didn't need to proceed further." The 2025 assessments represent the estimated value of a property on July 1, 2024. There is a $50 fee for filing a complaint with the Assessment Review Board. How your assessment affects your tax bill Lidgren also noted a big assessment increase doesn't necessarily mean a correspondingly large increase in your tax bill, which can be a point of confusion for some people. What actually matters, he said, is how the change in your assessment compares to the change in the average assessment. The average assessment increase, remember, was 15 per cent. So if your assessment grew by less than that, your tax increase will be below average as well. If it grew by more than that, then your tax increase will be larger than average. If your assessment happened to be exactly average, Lidgren said you can expect a five per cent increase in your municipal tax bill and about a 15 per cent increase in your provincial tax bill. The provincial increase is larger because the Alberta government hiked its portion of Calgarians' property tax bills significantly in its most recent budget, and signalled an intention to do so again next year, in an effort to increase the share of education funding that comes from property taxes. A typical single-family home in Calgary is now assessed at $697,000. City taxes on a home like that will increase by about $11 per month in 2025, along with an $18 per month increase in provincial property taxes. As for the people who did go through with a formal complaint, we won't find out for a while yet how many were successful in getting their assessments lowered. Those files are still working their way through the Assessment Review Board process.
CBC
07-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Sticker shock of property assessments keep city phone lines busy
Property assessments were up by an average 15 per cent this year, prompting Calgarians to light up the phones at city hall. But as Robson Fletcher reports, just because the city thinks your home or business is worth a lot more, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll see a huge jump in your property taxes.
CBC
07-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Property assessment freeze in 2026 may force 'difficult decisions,' minister admits
Social Sharing The New Brunswick government says it hopes municipalities will be able to absorb a broad property assessment freeze in 2026 without raising tax rates on property owners. But if municipal budget figures from this year are a guide, that may be a tall order. At a news conference Wednesday, Aaron Kennedy, the minister responsible for Service New Brunswick, said he hopes municipalities will be able to scrape by in 2026 on revenue assessment increases they can generate outside the freeze and by making "difficult decisions" about how they spend money in their communities. "I appreciate their frustration with the announcement, but I think when you take into consideration that sales and new construction and major renovations is excluded from the freeze there are many municipalities that won't have a freeze in their revenues," Kennedy said. WATCH | 'You, as government, need to do something,' province told by homeowners: Will N.B.'s property assessment freeze actually help lower tax bills? 3 hours ago Duration 1:25 New Brunswick Local Government Minister Aaron Kennedy says homeowners angry with their rising property tax bills persuaded the province to freeze property assessments in 2026. But a similar freeze in 2018 was partially nullified when 41 municipalities raised their property tax rates in response. In Saint John, Mayor Donna Reardon said the city has a number of financial obligations that are already fixed for next year, including negotiated wage increases for unionized employees, that cannot easily be managed in the absence of revenue growth. "We have four unions we have contracts with and their wages won't be frozen," Reardon said. "It's difficult." Had a similar freeze been imposed in the current year, Saint John budget documents suggest the city would have had significant problems making ends meet. Saint John did experience about $2 million in increased tax revenue this year from new construction, but that is well short of what would have been needed to finance a $6.8-million increase — or 3.5 per cent — in municipal expenditures and a $2.6-million reduction in the city's tax rate in the 2025 budget. Some combination of higher tax rates and service cuts adding up to $7 million or more would have been needed to make that budget balance under a freeze this year. Kennedy said a $63-million increase in funding to local government's from the province announced in this year's budget should also help soften the blow of the assessment freeze, although he said decisions on how much of those increases each municipality will receive will be made at a later date. In 2018, during New Brunswick's last assessment freeze, 41 New Brunswick communities did eventually raise tax rates to finance their budgets that year.
