Why Your Property Values Increased

By REBECCA HAZEN
News Editor

Chief Appraiser at the Dade County Tax Assessors Office, Paula Duvall, explained to citizens what a sales ratio is, and why it factored into their decision to change property values, during the weekly county update on Thursday, June 10.

The definition of the ratio per Department of Revenue standards is “sales and assessment sales ratio studies reflect economic conditions, both as to neighborhood and type of improvement.”

“As you know, we did increase values slightly in residential homes and the larger increase was on the land values,” Duvall said.

Duvall explained why the Tax Assessors Office increased the dollar per square foot again this year.

“What we look at is the median actual. Because Georgia tax is at 40 percent, it is our job to make that median be as close to 40 percent as possible. What that means is that our values are actually in line with what is actually selling. The Department of Revenue does give some leeway, as long as that number is between .36 and .42. That is what is considered a passing ratio, meaning our values are good with what has been selling in the county,” Duvall said.

Dade County’s number was .35. Out of 278 sales in the county, residential property values were low.

“We were too low, we were not in line with the market,” Duvall explained.

Another item that the Tax Assessors Office looked at was the COD, or Coefficient of Dispersion, which measures uniformity. That number, per Department of Revenue standards, should not go above .15, if it is a residential property. If it is not a homestead property, it should not go above .20.

“Our COD before we made any changes was .21. What that means is there are some outliers in that group of sales that are either extremely low or high, or we’re just way off the mark,” Duvall said.

The third item is called the PRD, Price Related Differential, which measures bias. Per Department of Revenue standards, that number should be between .98 and 1.10. The PRD for Dade County was 1.04.

“That number was okay, but we do have two large evidences that our values for 2021 were too low according to the market,” Duvall said. “This is what we looked at before we made any changes.”

Duvall said that the dollar per square foot was increased by $5 in order to be in line with standards. The price was increased from $85 to $90.

Property assessments were recently mailed out to all property owners, and they have until July 13 to appeal, if they choose to do so.

Duvall noted that she will appear on another weekly county update in the future to discuss the sales ratio study for land values.

Also during the county update, County Executive Ted Rumley said that paving season was starting.

“We have several roads that we’re going to be working on,” Rumley said. “We will probably begin out on Sand Mountain on some of our shorter roads. We will probably move on in to Wells Road and Hales Gap. We have a lot of construction that is going to start here within a week or two, so just bear with us,” Rumley said.

Other roads that will be paved include Route 189 on Lookout Mountain to the Tennessee line and a section of Route 136 heading up Sand Mountain.

“We will keep you up to date when we know when the start dates are,” Rumley said.

Rumley also thanked everyone who turned out for the South Dade fundraiser barbecue, and noted that the fire department sold out of barbecue in a matter of hours.

Dade County has seen 9 cases in the past two weeks, for a total of 1,248 COVID-19 cases. The number of cases can be found at https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report.

“The numbers look really good ,” Rumley said. “We are holding our own here in Dade County. It seems like more and more people are getting vaccinated, and we appreciate it, but we understand if you don’t.”