City of Decatur Real Estate Stats from 2010 to Present
Decatur Metro | July 27, 2012Interesting post over on The Intown Insider blog discussing average home prices in the City of Decatur and the trend over the last couple years. We’ve gotten some good real estate info about Decatur over the years, but this one takes a slightly different approach. Thought it might be of interest to the more real estate-inclined among us. Here’s the question, which inspired the post…
My friend and neighbor Nathan asked an interesting question on the Lenox Place neighborhood Facebook page this week, and this article should serve as a comprehensive answer. He asked: “Does anyone know how to find average house prices in the City of Decatur or if there’s an easy way to do this? I’m trying to track average prices of, at least, 3-2′s and 2-1′s over the past few years.”
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great share, DM. thanks.
our market’s looking very good.
on a related note, i’ve found Zillow to be, at least re: our home, way off in its valuation.
square footage and number of bed and bathrooms were wrong, and have not been updated since i verified myself as the homeowner and corrected them four months ago.
the recent appraisal we had done for our re-fi came in 10% higher than Zillow has listed.
no big whoop, but that’s meaningful whoop to me.
Hi folks – thanks for the compliment of placing my post here. Zillow zestimates and “zappraising” are always a topic nowadays – they are a breakthrough site, but they are not accurate.
Check out the article link below from their own analysis of their numbers – their chart cites that they have 2 million “zestimates” for the metro Atlanta market on file. here’s how accurate they are:
only 27.3% are within 5% of sales price
only 48.2% are within 10% of sales price
70.3% are within 20% of sales price, but so what?!
http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm
Zillow seems to be WAAAY off. House in my neighborhood recently sold for $375; Zillow had it as $463.
I’d be curious to know how accurate tax appraisals are compared to sales price. Are they any closer than Zillow?
I am sure the Intown insider would agree that Tax Appraisals have historically had absolutely no bearing on the Market Value of a home. A couple of years ago, DeKalb started re-assessing at market sales prices ( a relatively good way to do it), so I’d imagin the homes that have sold in the last few years would be incredibly close, but only once they are updated.
Brianc – tax appraisals are a very subjective and touchy subject. My best example is my own.
Spaceman – I wholeheartedly agree. Government gets this stuff wrong, whatever their motives may be, often, if not most of the time.
Here’s my story:
I bought a $152000 fixer upper vintage 1972 2/2/1 townhouse at Decatur Townhouses on Adair in October 2010 – my primary residence – the county used my sales price for valuation for 2011 – $152000, so it went up in value by about $20,000 from the prior owner’s 2010 assessment.
Fast forward…Two months ago, the county appraised my townhouse at $210,000 for 2012 – I sent in a tax return challenge and cited two key things, among others:
1. my unit did not go up in value even based on 2011 comparables (the basis for the recent appraisals/assessments) – I had solid comps and I stand by last year’s valuation
2. 4 of my neighbors with the exact same floor plan and similar updates (I spent $20-25K in renovations after purchase) just went through the tax fight for their 2010 values, and in May were rewarded with $148000 values by the Dekalb assessor and got three year grandfathering
40% increases did not occur between 2011 and 2010 at Decatur Townhouses, and a unit similar to mine sold in foreclosure in March 2012 for $!00,000 (a real outlier) – quite a deal! I guess I get to use that one as a comp next year…
40% decreases did not occur between 2011 and 2010 in neighborhoods like Hawthorn Park in Kirkwood or Lantern Ridge just ITP off of Covington, but that’s what they got from the assessor.
The scuttlebutt among astute neighbors and some of my brainier Realtor friends is that Dekalb is sticking it to the best school districts and relieving the most downtrodden – it ain’t fair, and most of the folks that I know in the city of Decatur seem to be at some level of dispute with recent valuations.
Since Zillow is using the tax assessors’ numbers as the basis of most of their zestimating, and since those numbers are within 20% range, 70% of the time (at least in metro Atlanta) well, Zillow is even worse than the tax assessor in my opinion – algorhythmic valuation is never as good as local valuation, but when Dekalb is as challenged as they are to be a solvent, well run county, sticking it to the taxpayers outweighs honest assessments…
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t a better way to handle property taxes than value assessments.