Dread on Arrival

Property Tax Assessments Aren't Always Bad News

Even before Jennifer Brandel received the property tax assessment for her Arlington condominium, she was online researching how to challenge what she expected would be a lofty valuation.

For each of the four years that Brandel has lived in the condo, the assessment has risen. But with home prices softening this past year, she was not willing to accept yet another increase.

To her surprise, she did not have to -- because Arlington County "was right on the money," she said. When she got her notice in mid-January, her assessment was down by $41,500 from the previous year.

"In my head I had been preparing for a battle, sort of gearing up to contest the assessment so I could bring it down to something approaching market value," said Brandel, 36. "I opened up the envelope and I was really relieved that I didn't have to fight."

Around the Washington region, many homeowners who have not already received their property assessments will get them soon.

The notices will be the first in many years to try to capture values in a less-than-booming and rapidly changing housing market. Many homeowners say they expect this year's assessments -- and the related property taxes -- to reflect the market's downturn. If not, assessors across the region may be dealing with angry calls and more than the usual smattering of appeals from disgruntled homeowners.

In Arlington County, the average home value decreased for the first time in a decade, by 0.8 percent. In Fairfax County and Alexandria, which both plan to mail notices this month, local officials expect values to be flat.

But not everyone will see that, as many Maryland homeowners will attest. The state, which sent its notices at the end of December, assesses a third of the properties every year. The average home value there rose 59.4 percent from 2003 through 2006, in part because of the record-breaking home sales in the first two years of the triennial cycle. Values spiked most sharply in Prince George's and St. Mary's counties and in parts of Baltimore County, where demand for high-end housing outpaced supply. In Montgomery, Howard and Anne Arundel counties, assessments increased, too, but at less than the state average.

Homeowners who think their assessment is too high have the right to challenge it. But before they do so, many assessors urged that they take what Thomas Rice calls the "the common sense test."

"Ask yourself: 'Based on my knowledge of the properties around me, do I think my home should be valued higher, lower or the same?' " said Rice, Arlington County's director of real estate assessments. "The assessment should bear a reasonable relationship to the prices for which comparable properties are selling."

The assessment is the local government's estimate of what a home would sell for if exposed to the market for a reasonable period of time by an owner who is not acting under duress. In other words, that owner is in no rush to leave because of a pending foreclosure or maybe a last-minute, job-related move.

An assessment is not the same as an appraisal, which is an individual determination of the value of a house, usually performed for a mortgage lender. Government assessors do not appraise individual houses. Instead, they conduct a "mass appraisal" of homes that are close to each other and have similar characteristics, sometimes thousands of homes at a time. That involves reviewing deeds for the prices of homes sold and then using those prices to value properties that have not been sold.