Revaluation evaluation
If you're a homeowner, maybe, just maybe, your property will be assigned a different (read: higher) tax value sooner than expected.
Guilford County's next revaluation of properties is scheduled to take effect in 2012. But after listening to Thomas Ross of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation discuss the benefits of more frequent revaluations last month, there was talk among county leaders of moving the date up.
With more frequent property appraisals, he said, the county can capture growth in the tax base more regularly. More frequent revaluations would keep tax values closer to what properties would fetch on the market.
But many taxpayers with homes gaining value would likely see their property-tax bills go way up with the next revaluation, even though the overall tax rate would go down. On top of that, the county commissioners would probably set that tax rate higher the "revenue-neutral" rate, which most people would consider a tax increase. That happened after the last revaluation.
And revaluations cost money. The next one will cost more than $300,000, according to interim tax director Francis Kinlaw. He said close to half of the state's 100 counties had conducted revaluations more frequently than eight years apart, the maximum allowed by law.
The last revaluation was in 2004, and some of Greensboro's older neighborhoods got a big boost in home values. Here's our story from May 2004.
The earliest the next revaluation could take effect is Jan. 1, 2010, county administrators say. The county would need to hire back six revaluation employees by July to make that deadline, Kinlaw said.
The final say is up to the county commissioners.
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