The Town of Blacksburg Wants Your Two Cents

Real estate taxes.  Everyone’s favorite subject.

And the Town of Blacksburg wants your $.02.  No, seriously … they want to hear from you.  A public hearing on the increase will be held on April 12 2011, 7:30pm in the Roger E. Hedgepeth Chambers, 300 South Main Street.

When the last reassessments were done in Montgomery County, it was determined that the total average value in the Town of Blacksburg had gone up 4 percent (how they determined that you’ve got me).  Per state law, anytime the average assessed value rises by 1 percent or more, a municipality is required to post the notice below (or something similar) announcing the effective change.  In this case, it’s probably not a true tax increase – many properties within the Town saw values drop slightly, while few actually rose, so I wouldn’t expect to see a great number of increasing tax bills.

From the Town website:

The Town of Blacksburg proposes to increase property tax levies.

Assessment Increase: Total assessed value of real property, excluding additional assessments due to new construction or improvements to property, exceeds last year’s total assessed value of real property by 4.00 percent.

Lowered Rate Necessary to Offset Increased Assessment: The tax rate which would levy the same amount of real estate tax as last year, when multiplied by the new total assessed value of real estate with the exclusions mentioned above, would be $0.212 per $100 of assessed value. This rate will be known as the “lowered tax rate.”

Effective Rate Increase: The Town of Blacksburg proposes to adopt a tax rate of $0.22 per $100 of assessed value. The difference between the lowered tax rate and the proposed rate would be $0.008 per $100 or 3.6 percent. This difference will be known as the “effective tax rate increase.”

Individual property taxes may, however, increase at a percentage greater than or less than the above percentage.

Proposed Total Budget Increase: Based on the proposed real property tax rate and changes in other revenues, the total budget of the Town of Blacksburg will exceed last year’s by 14.2 percent more than last year’s budget.

One more thing …

I said above that I couldn’t imagine how they determined home values to have gone up 4% in Blacksburg.  Turns out … I was kind of wrong.  Below is a list of the average sales price for Blacksburg homes sold through the Multiple Listing Service since 2006:

2006 – $250015
2007 – $256127
2008 – $254612
2009 – $253341
2010 – $257162

The data don’t lie.  Are sold home prices up in the Town of Blacksburg?  Yes.  Are assessed values actually up?  That’s harder to tell.

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