As Cumberland County property owners continue to worry that their tax bills are going to leap on July 1 because of the county’s recent re-appraisal of their property values, the county commissioners are considering whether to reevaluate everyone’s property more frequently than once every eight years.
More frequent revaluations could blunt the sticker shock that Cumberland County residents encountered in February when they received notices of the county’s new appraised values of their property.
The county tax administrator gave a presentation to the Board of Commissioners on Thursday on the idea of doing revaluations every four years or every six years. He suggested that the county do its next revaluation six years from now, in 2031, followed by a four-year cycle.
The commissioners took no action on the idea.
Nearly 9,000 people filed appeals in the initial informal appeals process seeking to have a county tax appraiser reduce their appraised values, county officials have said. The formal appeal process, in which the property owner makes their case before the Board of Equalization and Review, is ongoing with a May 28 deadline.
Since 2017, the last time Cumberland County conducted appraisals for property revaluations, the values for residential, commercial and industrial real estate went up 64.7% countywide on average. Residential values alone jumped 86.2% on average.
Pros and cons of quicker tax value tempo
Appraisals conducted once every four years, or once every six years, vs. once every eight years offer advantages and disadvantages for the property owners and the county government, county Tax Administrator George Utley told the commissioners on Thursday.
“A shorter cycle will equalize the tax burden more frequently, and I feel like that is fairer to property owners,” Utley said. “More frequent revaluations will allow for a better understanding, better education of the public, so that they understand the process.”
On the plus side: a shorter period between revaluations theoretically would result in smaller incremental increases in the assessed values, he said, which could lead to fewer people appealing their new values. Also, the county’s data will be based on more current sales prices in the real estate market, he said.
On the downside, Utley said, residents may perceive the more-frequent tax appraisals as an effort to raise property taxes.
The cost to the county of doing appraisals will rise if revaluations are done more often, he said, as it hires a permanent revaluation team. A team needs personnel, office space, computers, software, training and vehicles, he said. The county would need to hire 10 more people for revaluations done every four years, and five more people if the commissioners proceed with a six-year cycle, he said.
And if property values dip, then the county commissioners may find themselves paying for an appraisal plus raising property tax rates to compensate for the decreased values, Utley said.
Utley proposed the county conduct the next revaluation in 2031, six years from now, instead of the state-mandated eight years. After that, he said, the county can get on a four-year revaluation cycle for 2035 and 2039.
Commissioner Marshall Faircloth asked if the county could use the federal Consumer Price Index for housing, which tracks the rise and fall of residential prices, to adjust the tax value of Cumberland County’s real estate.
Other states do this, Utley said, but North Carolina law doesn’t allow for that.
Commissioners Chair Kirk deViere said he would like to find out what it would cost to hire an outside contractor to conduct revaluation appraisals. “We’ll have a conversation with the county manager and look at that course of action,” he said.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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