Land Value 'Correction' Surprises Homeowners

It was no surprise to Cathlin Bowman that the 2008 real estate assessment she received from Fairfax County this week showed a modest dip in the value of her three-bedroom McLean home, to $564,930 from $567,590 in 2007.

A barren housing market and a deteriorating economy have pushed residential property values down about 3 percent countywide.

What stunned her was the gaping disparity between the value of the 1951 brick-and-shingle house on Barbee Street and the land under it. The 11,500-square-foot lot, assessed at $301,000 last year, is now worth $501,000 -- an increase of 66 percent.

Her house, assessed at $266,590 in 2007, is now valued at $63,930 -- a decrease of 76 percent.

"Heck, $63,000 won't even buy you a decent kitchen these days," Bowman, director of learner-centered education at the American College of Cardiology, wrote in an e-mail Wednesday to the Fairfax Department of Tax Administration. "The county now believes my house is worth less than a mobile home or even a studio condominium."

Bowman is one of scores of bewildered -- and suspicious -- Fairfax taxpayers whose homes are shriveling in assessed value while the underlying dirt appreciates robustly. Some have suggested a massive software foul-up that flipped land and building values. Others wonder whether the county is trying to hang on to tax revenue in an economy sliding toward recession.

"Real estate interests have probably benefited in some way," said George Taft, a retired State Department lawyer whose home in the Wilton Woods neighborhood fell in assessed value from $431,070 to $267,480, while the land went up nearly $100,000.

County officials said there is no mistake, nor any bid to gain extra money. What homeowners are seeing, they said, is an attempt to raise land values that have remained disproportionately flat in recent years relative to the homes.

Officials said the elevated assessments are based on an analysis of sales of nearby vacant land. Because the supply of undeveloped property in the county is diminishing, it took more than a year of sales to document the change, they said. Included were neighborhoods with lots that once held older homes that were torn down and replaced by much larger residences.

The numbers, said tax department director Kevin Greenlief, reflect "a pent-up correction," but nothing more. Bottom-line assessments are unaffected; only the allocations of value between land and building have shifted, he said.

"In no way, shape or form is DTA cooking the books or propping up revenues because of the budget situation," he said.

Members of the Board of Supervisors, pelted with phone calls and e-mails over the past couple of days, questioned Greenlief's account.