MOULTRIE – Colquitt County Board of Tax Assessors Chief Appraiser Jim Mac Booth explained to commissioners at a recent commission meeting why residents were seeing a significant increase in their annual property tax assessments. His answer: the sales of homes.
Colquitt County residents have received their annual property tax assessments at the beginning of June and have until July 19 to file a written appeal ahead of the bills being sent out. Commissioners at the July 2 meeting voiced that they had received calls about the increases their constituents saw on the assessments.
Booth handed out sheets that had numbers reflecting the median values, per square foot, of properties and what properties were selling for in Colquitt County subdivisions. He used them to give examples of how the process worked.
“And how we got this, we took last year’s. All the parcels in the subdivision in the Lee Lewis-Rufus Murphy Road area, we have all the parcels in that area. We found the median value, which was $81. Then, we took all the sales we had in the area for the past three years and we got the median sales value, which was $96. That showed that we needed to increase that area $15 square foot per house,” he said, giving an example of one of the neighborhoods from the hand-outs.
Chairman Denver Braswell asked him if he did something like this for every neighborhood and Booth responded in the affirmative. He then asked if any of the neighborhoods had doubled in value and Booth responded, “Some did.”
Braswell said that the calls the commissioners were getting were about increases of 75% and 100% and the example they were looking at was only about 16% or 18%.
Booth said that his own neighborhood had gone from $89 per square foot to $116, which was a dramatic increase.
“That’s what the sales show. The increase was warranted,” he said.
Commissioner Mike Boyd said that he had a call from someone whose house value had doubled and there were no improvements made to the house. He wanted to know where the number came from.
Booth said, “In the past, we have put factors in that made them increase and they increased a lot. … And that’s why we have the appeal process. If he’ll come in and appeal his value, we can work with him.”
Boyd then asked what would the factors be that would double the value without any improvements.
Booth responded that when the homeowner bought it, there could have been increased cost and design and they could have increased the grade to make it match the sale.
Boyd said, “I’m trying to understand the system that causes the value to go up to that degree.”
Booth had the commissioners look at the neighborhood sales sheet again and said that if they looked at the home that was at the top, it was $108 per square foot. He said if it increased $15 a square foot, it would be $123 per square foot, a 7% increase. By contrast, a home at the very bottom of the sheet was $13 per square foot. If it went up $15, that would be $28 per square foot, more than double the original value.
Booth gave another example of a neighborhood that’s values had increased and said they had jumped up because people were paying more for homes and, when all the factors were multiplied, the values jumped up faster.
“What are the factors?” asked Boyd and before Booth answered Braswell asked why the values didn’t keep up with last year’s values.
Booth responded, “The market has gone ballistic.”
In a conversation with The Observer Monday, First National Bank Vice President and Mortgage Officer Marybell Hernandez said that housing sales have increased.
In 2022, home sales decreased due to the increase of rates. “This refrained people from buying or building homes,” she said.
Around the fourth quarter of 2023, Hernandez said, there was a change because buyers stopped waiting for rates to decrease.
“So, they started moving forward with their plans of buying and/or building their future homes,” she said.
The value increases were widespread through the community, Booth said at the July 2 meeting, in response to a comment from Commissioner Marc DeMott.
“Everybody except a neighborhood in Northwest Moultrie,” he said.
Under the state’s best practices, Booth’s staff should appraise every property in the county over the course of three years. Boyd asked if the staff was appraising one-third of properties each year. Booth said it was probably closer to 10% because of a lack of manpower.
“So, it takes ten years to make the rounds, would that be right?” asked Boyd and Booth said with their current staff.
Commissioner Johnny Hardin wanted to know why there were differences in the values of the same kind of house, with the same floor plan, in the city and, then, with the same house in the county, which was valued at even more, when there had been no home sales in the area.
“In the county, because there aren’t that many sales of an excellent house, we use data sales from all excellent houses throughout the county,” Booth said.
He further explained that an “excellent house” that was out in the country, three miles from downtown Moultrie, is valued the same as an “excellent house” that was three miles on the other side of Moultrie because they don’t have that many of them.
Booth said some of the increases are being driven by remodels. He said when a house is remodeled it has an “effective year built,” as well as a “year built.” The “effective year” is determined by how much the house has been updated to reflect how old the property appears.
Booth said that, for example, a house built in 1955, after renovations, could have an “effective year” of 1975.
Booth said the appraiser doesn’t have a clear-cut formula to determine the “effective year.”
“How much of those new upgrades add to the life of that house. Nobody tells us, we don’t know. We’re doing the best we can,” Booth said.
Further discussion ensued with Booth giving more examples, based on the paperwork the commissioners were looking at.
County Administrator Chas Cannon wanted to know when Booth thought the tax digest would be set and Booth told him probably close to the end of July.
He reiterated to commissioners that the increases in the values of homes were based on the sales of homes in a neighborhood during the year. He also reiterated that homeowners could appeal until July 19.