Led by steep declines in Willoughby and parts of Ocean View, downtown and Larchmont, residential real estate assessments will fall by 4.9 percent in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Real Estate Assessor Deborah Bunn released assessment figures to the City Council this afternoon.
Overall assessments, including commercial and industrial property, will decline 3.6 percent, Bunn told the Council. It will be the first decline in city assessments in more than two decades.
Virginia Beach Assessor Jerry Banagan, who said he expects a 5.75 percent decline in residential real estate, is the only other assessor in South Hampton Roads to announce an estimate.
The declines mean that most but not all Norfolk homeowners will see a modest reduction in real estate taxes beginning July 1. That assumes the Council does not raise real estate taxes.
Bunn stressed that not all of the recent declines in real estate prices are reflected in her figures. She said some neighborhoods were under assessed last year, and if housing prices have dropped in those neighborhoods, assessments may not have fallen.
In all, 193 of 268 neighborhoods will see reduced assessments and 53 will show gains. Of those with gains,12 neighborhoods will have increases of one percent or greater and 41 will have gains of less than one percent. Twenty two neighborhoods will see no change in their assessments.
Some 31 neighborhoods, including eight in the Ocean View and Willoughby areas, will have double-digit losses. The Shore Drive west waterfront (22 percent) and Shore Drive west (20 percent) neighborhoods in Ocean View will have the steepest decline. Willoughby will fall by 19 percent and the downtown College Place area by 18 percent.
Holly Point, a small neighborhood on the waterfront near the Lafayette Shores, will show an average increase of 34 percent, but nearly all of that increase was the result of new construction, Bunn said.
The city’s real estate tax base dropped in value from $19.1 billion to $18.4 billion. Residential real estate, including apartments, fell by $638 million to $14.1 billion, according to statistics released by Bunn.
Although there is little vacant land in Norfolk, values plummeted, with vacant residential land falling by 7.3 percent and vacant industrial and commercial land by nearly 6.5 percent.
Posted by: choosejeremy | March 2, 2010
Norfolk residential real estate assessments will fall by 4.9 percent | PilotOnline.com
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