There was a lot of talk on FFAF this past week as property owners around Decatur and DeKalb County received their annual property tax bills for the coming year, many reporting large increases in the value.  You may recall all the hubbub back in 2012 when county had to do a number of reassessments.

Well things are still confusing for many residents.  John wrote in detailing his own recent findings, which show the odd trends that still exist along single streets…

Well, here we are again at property re-assessment time.  Based on your prior reporting of a 6% average increase, I was prepared to see something in that range.  Alas, being DeKalb County, it has to be something more complicated than that.  As was noted a few years ago, the assessors “flipped” the amount for each of the assessment’s components (*previously*, the LAND value was the lower, fairly constant amount among neighboring properties and the IMPROVEMENTS value was the higher, quite variable amount among neighboring properties – these were the components “flipped” a few years ago). 

Now, looking at several property values under the new assessments, some of the assessments have reverted back to the previous low land, high improvements values while other assessments remain at the recent high land, low improvements values.  In addition to being inconsistent and, frankly, looking haphazard, this makes it very difficult to adequately compare property values among competing properties.

Here are some of the assessments I came across (from properties on same street):
Property 1              LAND  236,300       IMPROVEMENTS 101,900
Property 2              LAND     85,200      IMPROVEMENTS 188,900
Property 3              LAND   184,300      IMPROVEMENTS   49,570
Property 4              LAND     85,200      IMPROVEMENTS 322,700

Nonsensical.