Category: Reappraisal

Are Sheds Real or Personal Property? Yes.

Have you considered that our generation might be the last to remember life before the digital age?

In 1992, all property tax questions came to me by phone. I could hear voices, sense urgency, and build rapport with assessors and appraisers through small talk. If my answer wasn’t quite right, we engaged in dialogue—what IAAO 400 calls feedback, a crucial skill for effective communication. I sometimes miss those conversations. If someone needed a written response, they’d send a letter, which might arrive a week later.

Today, most property tax questions and answers happen via email. Recently, one exchange stood out as something worth sharing in a blog post. Blogs are a digital-age tool I don’t use enough, but I bet across NC, we have countless emails that could be turned into blog posts—creating a shared space for these discussions..

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A Reappraisal Citizen Advisory Committee, would it work?

How might a citizen advisory committee aid in the reappraisal process? In the SOG publication, “Creating and Maintaining Effective Local Government Citizen Advisory Committees, Upshaw, 2010″, here is the introductory reason to have CACs:

When communities face complex issues affecting large, diverse groups, citizen engagement leads to people being better informed, better able to collaborate with others, and more active in addressing issues that affect them. By sharing responsibility, local officials increase opportunities for citizens to contribute to the common good.

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Are You Calculated or Deeded?

…on a south branch of White Oak on the south south side as follows. Beginning at a pine thence So67W 140 poles to a branch to three pines thence So7Et 120 poles to a post…to the beginning Containing 100 acres more or less.

A county mapper recently contacted me with a question and not surprisingly I had to learn the answer myself to provide an answer. I am not a mapper nor have I had the opportunity to work closely with mappers, so if you can add to this discussion, please do so below through “Leave a Reply”. While searching for the answer, some documents were revealed that I think will be helpful to others.

The issue involved a county that assesses land based on deeded acres, which may include road right of way. The question was whether there is guidance to help establish a county policy identifying assessment best practice regarding situations where deeded acreage may include road right of way or when deeded acreage varies from calculated acreage.  The answer is, yes.

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Appraisal and Reappraisal. Just Do It?

In late 2014, just after joining the SOG, the NCDOR included me in the initial discussions among assessors about North Carolina’s reappraisal standards. This blog post includes some of the thoughts and questions that I shared with the group at that time. Please keep in mind that this post is written informally, from my perspective during late 2014. I was discussing with the committee, mainly through emails, whether the assessment system our taxpayers deserve was being delivered. On the other side of an inadequate reappraisal, I wasn’t sure our lawmakers in Raleigh would accept an excuse of, “We weren’t given the needed resources”.  I’ll refer again back to this related blog post on ways to request what is needed.

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