Property Revaluation Process

Property Revaluation notices go in the mail next week. This is important; if you are a homeowner I ask that you take a moment to read the below article and understand what is going on here, because it will impact you.

People assume that when their property value goes up that means their tax bill goes up. Not necessarily. The reason is, the Town is required to advertise a “revenue neutral tax rate”. That means, basically, that the property tax rate is going to drop, such that when multiplied by the total property tax value, the end result is the same. The town will not gain (or lose) any revenue directly because of the reval. It is a non-issue from a budget standpoint.

However, there is a caveat. The tax rates are flat – everyone gets charged the same. But, the property value increase is anything but uniform: some houses may have doubled in value, where as other houses may have only gone up 10% or so.

The way the math works out is, basically, if your home value went up more than the average, your property tax bill will go up. If your home value went up by less than average, your property tax bill will go down. And, as I said: it’s zero sum, in the sense that the bills that went up offset exactly the bills that went down. Which is of little consolation to those whose bills went up.

To make matters worse: I expect the homes on the lower end of the property value spectrum have increased in value, percentage wise, much faster than the homes on the higher end of the spectrum. They just have more room to increase. If that ends up being the case, then we have what is a classic regressive tax increase, increasing the tax burden on those with small homes and lowering it on the more expensive homes. Which is terrible policy.

When the data actually comes out next week I will dig in more and see how the reval has impacted property owners in Apex. Expect a bunch of charts, etc, and policy talk about what we can do about it. But for now, for those of you who have read this far, I’ll end with the actual numbers: Property values in Apex have increased by 56% in this reval, and as a result our new tax rate will drop to from $0.44 all the way down to around $0.30 per $100.