Below is a portion of an actual reassessment notice that was
sent out in 2017. As stated previously,
these were the actual comps that were used to calculate the appraised value of
the associated properties:
Even without knowing any specific information about the
individual properties, you don’t have to look at this long to notice the wide
range of sale prices --- from $399,000 to $910,212. That’s a very wide range! So wide, in fact, that it would have immediately
indicated to anyone that was looking for comparable properties that these are
obviously not “comparable.” They’re not
even comparable to each other so they can’t possibly be comparable to a subject
property, regardless of the specifics of the subject property.
It gets worse when you look at the specifics of the comp’s
properties:
- Johnson Place is a 2635 sq ft 4 bedroom 2-story built in 1992 on .23 acres
- Mason Meadows is a 2480 sq ft 3-bedroom RANCH built in 1988 on .45 acres located 1.41 miles away from the subject
properties
- Loehr Estates is a 2557 sq
ft 1-bedroom RANCH built in 2016 on .67 acres
- Clarjon is a 3201 sq ft 4 bedroom 2-story built in 1998 on .28 acres
- Des Peres Woods is a 2772 sq ft 4 bedroom 2-story built in 1987 on .35 acres located 1.58 miles away from the subject
properties
This list of comps was used for more than a dozen different
homes – none of which were ranches, and none of which were newer than 23 years
old – yet this list contains two ranches, one of which was built in 2016 and only
a year old at the time, and two comps outside of a one-mile radius.
For the associated target properties, there were 235 valid home sales in 2014, 15, and 16
within a one-mile radius of the target properties from which the County
Assessor’s office could have chosen comps.
The County Assessor’s office was aware of the list of relevant home
sales because they posted the list online along with the property reassessment
information. Yet in spite of having a
very large list of homes available to them from which to choose, the County
Assessor’s office opted instead to comp two of the five houses from outside of
the one-mile radius.
Wait, what?
Remember 2005 Missouri Revised Statutes %137.115?
Except there were
similar properties within one mile of the assessed properties.
In fact, there were dozens of very comparable homes sold,
and numerous properties that were more
similar and more closely located than the ones that were selected by
the County Assessor’s office even from within the one-mile radius.
So why would the County Assessor’s office choose these poor
comps when they had good ones available?
If the intention of the County Assessor’s office had been to
accurately appraise the home values, then they would have simply chosen homes
from the extensive available list that were actually comparable to the subject
properties, as defined by the Statute above.
But if the intention of the County Assessor’s office was to increase the
current assessed value, and the prior re-assessment had already resulted in an
over-assessment, then it would be impossible to increase the assessed value
further by using true comparable home
sales. They simply wouldn’t mathematically
support an increase in assessed value and might even result in a decrease. The only option then would be to select homes
in which the sale price would support an increased assessment, regardless of
their comparability. And that’s exactly
what they did.
I don’t know which action is more reprehensible – the fact
that the County Assessor’s office manipulated the selection of comps badly in
order to artificially inflate the property values, or the fact that they so
blatantly disregarded Missouri Statutes in the process of doing so.
This was just an example.
The number of property records that I encountered in which the County
Assessor’s office similarly manipulated the selection of comps is significant, and I
really only looked at properties that were within a mile of mine. Plus, they have been doing so for at least a
decade that I can prove, sometimes even selecting “comps” that are more than 5
miles away.
But wait, there’s
more…!
When comparing even legitimate comparable properties, it’s
virtually impossible to find two that are identical. Therefore, the County Assessor’s office will
make adjustments to the sale prices to account for differences in the property
descriptions. The process is legitimate;
the manner in which the County Assessor’s office applies it is not.
In this example, the County Assessor’s office chose a comp (the
ranch on Mason Meadows) that was already significantly higher-priced due to its
location in Town and Country. Then, the
County Assessor adjusted the sale price even
higher still, because it was smaller and older than the target
properties.
And yet there’s still
more….
Remember the discussion about the Computer-Assisted Mass
Appraisal system (CAMA) from Tyler Technologies that the County Assessor’s
office uses?
The comps selected and calculations performed in this
example were done using the CAMA. The
Missouri Statute even makes reference to the assumption that assessments are
made by a computer unless proven otherwise:
Think about what this means for a second.
These aren’t “human errors.”
This wasn’t done by some newbie trainee, or by someone having a bad day,
or by someone simply bad at their job.
This was done by a computer.
Computers don’t make mistakes. They don’t get creative. They don’t go off-road and do their own
thing.
Computers do exactly what they are told to do.
Which means, this blatant and recurring inappropriate selection of comps is by design. And the instruction to do so is embedded either
in the computer code itself or in the control tables that support the code.
I’m a firm believer in the adage, “People that have nothing
to hide, hide nothing.”
No wonder the County Assessor’s office doesn’t want to
answer anything about how they come up with their numbers…….
No comments:
Post a Comment