Loudoun County residents will receive good news and bad news when they open their mail early this week: Property assessments dropped an average of about 10 percent in 2008.
That means that although their property isn’t worth as much as it was a year ago, their tax bills could be coming down.
The assessments, which were mailed to homeowners Friday, are bad news for Loudoun County officials, whose budget depends heavily on property values. More than two-thirds of the county’s general fund revenue, 74 percent, came from general property taxes in the current fiscal year.
Total taxable property fell from about $67.7 billion a year ago to just over $62 billion, according to the county assessor’s office, an 8.45 percent decrease.
Residential property values, which include single-family homes, townhouses, condos and vacant land, dropped by 13.26 percent, from about $44 billion to $38 billion.
County Administrator Kirby Bowers will prepare a budget next month, and the Board of Supervisors will set a tax rate based largely on the assessment data. If they do not raise the tax rate or raise it only slightly, property taxes would drop.
County Assessor Todd Kaufman said different types of properties and magisterial districts have not felt the same impact in the volatile housing market.
“You can’t compare what happened in a townhouse to a single-family detached,” he said.
The Sterling district, which has been hit particularly hard by foreclosures, saw a decline in residential property value of about 30 percent, whereas the Blue Ridge District on the western end of the county saw a decline of about 13 percent. Condos in Sterling lost nearly half their value on average, dropping from a total assessed value of about $440 million last year to just under $250 million this year.
“Property owners are affected in drastically different ways,” said Lori Waters, R-Broad Run.
Residents can appeal their assessments by filing a form within 30 days of Friday’s mailing. There is an automated appeal form on the Loudoun County government Web site for homeowners who want to dispute the assessed value of their property.
The assessor’s office on Friday already received its first application for a review from a property owner lobbying for a $7,000 increase on the assessment on his approximately $160,000 property, Kaufman said.
