 Hello. Welcome everybody. Thank you for participating and giving us a little time to get our technology in order. Can everybody hear me okay with the thumbs up? Okay, terrific. So we wanted to give this presentation to give people a better sense of what is important when appealing to your property taxes specifically. And there's some information out there but nothing that's really geared for drilling and so on. We think it's an opportunity to give you this sort of overview. So the first thing I'm going to do is talk about what we're going to talk about. So the first thing we're going to talk about is the scope of the presentation. So we're going to go into the various property valuations and assessment techniques including the cost approach, the sales comparison approach, the income approach. We're also going to talk about some special statutes that play in how things get set on the grand list in Vermont. We're going to talk about some guidelines and deadlines. Understanding the list of cards, which is the basic document or information that the sensor has about these properties that it uses to determine a value. And we're going to talk about something called the diminishing cost term, which is very important in property assessment. And then talk about specifically how to best make your case. And the two approaches we're going to look at is making your case use the cost approach, makes your case use the sales comparison approach. There is a very important thing in Vermont law called equalization and we'll talk about that. It's a very specific step-by-step appeal step that you take to appeal your assessment. Alan? Yes. Do you want to give introductions? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought our names were on the screen. My name is Alan Bearty and I am a resident here at Burlington and currently the chair of the Burlington Board of Activities. I'm John Diggory. I'm the Burlington Assessor and maybe I've met some of you at certain times. But mostly Alan put this whole production together. He did the line share of the work. But I think it's going to be very beneficial because we often have appeal hearings and people come in with the wrong sort of process. And we try to guide them in a different way. And we feel that if people have some tools, they'll be more successful. And also we will have better outcomes. That's the purpose of this. Thanks, Alan. Go ahead. Okay. So first let's look at the very big picture, which is that taxation generally has an analogy of the three-layered schools. They have property and assets, income and transaction. So income is the income tax and various things tie to income. Transactions are everything from sale taxes to bills and room taxes and property transfer taxes. And take every time you've got a registered motor vehicle. And then the government gets a lot of money, obviously, from the property school, the leg of the school. And so in Vermont, that's typically the real estate and the business personal property. In other states, it could include luxury motor yachts and boats and RVs and cars and things like that. In Vermont, we're pretty much tied to the real estate. So this is also the presentation to be clear. It's really directed towards homeowners. This is for single-family residences, due classes, fire classes, and condominiums. You would spend years studying property assessment, as John Hickory has, and could learn all of the other techniques than you want for the commercial and the farm and the industrial properties. But we're going to try and keep it focused on what people in Vermont would want to hear about. And that is homeowner orientation. So this is not a seminar or a presentation on four or more residential units that's considered commercial and commercial industrial farms. And also, homeowner special categories that we're not going to touch on here today. So there's four basic approaches that are used. First is the policy approach. Second is something called the sales comparison approach. The third is the income approach. And then finally, there are special statutory sections that apply. So the first thing is cutting back on what does the state statute say of how we're supposed to value properties for the grand list. And we're supposed to set them at fair market value. And the fair market value is the price of the property. We'll bring in the market when offered for sale and purchased by another. Taking into consideration all the elements of availability of the property its use, both potential and prospective, any functional deficiencies and the other elements such as age and condition to combine in property to market value. Basically when somebody went in to please buy it for something to sell it for in the free market. Indirectly though, the statute does not say in determining if estimated fair market value the sale price that a property you actually sold for is one element to consider but it's not solely determinable. So sometimes we'll see, for example, somebody paid too much for property. They paid more than it was worth. And there are reasons for that. And then sometimes we'll see, for example, maybe with a transaction between friends or relatives or something like that and that sale price does not determine whether it's valid or not. John, do you have anything to add to that? Yes, I think the important part of there is sometimes the sale is important if it's a fair market transaction but it's not the solely determinative because you should be looking at other market indicators as well, other sold properties. So let's first go into the cost approach. The cost approach is the most common form of setting value in the math of Grasville or what we just went through is the real Grasville process. It includes multiple data points for both the land and the buildings that are being assessed. It includes the property location, the size of the property, the size of the buildings, the characteristics of each and it implies an algorithm that has actually been tested against sales to come up with a valuation that is supported again by sale model. So I'll just take a quick peek at the algorithm you just brought and this is the algorithm. And the point of this is really to say it's quite nuanced and there's quite a lot to it. And so a lot of times people come to us and say, apartment sale for a $120,000 bedroom downtown, so my property should be valued in tax. And it's really a little bit more complex than that and we'll get into some of that. But we just wanted you to see what the actual algorithm is because it is quite detailed. Next we'll look at the sales comparison approach to value. In the sales comparison approach you identify recent comparable sales that are quantified arm-length transactions. So again, this is where the property was exposed to the market and somebody wanted to sell it. People looked at it and somebody decided to buy it and they bought it for a certain price. Not inter-family, not transactions to convey property among partners or anything like that. The next step is to identify the critical components of each property. And then you evaluate the value of the component that are different between the comparable sale that you're comparing it to in your property which is called the subject property. And then you estimate the sales price of the subject property by adjusting the sales price of the property that's sold to accommodate the differences. Now this is a lot of work. So let me just show you an example. If you've ever had a property appraisal done, for example, with the bank work that you're getting a mortgage loan or something like that, there is a report and the report includes the sales comparison approach. So here you can see my mouse moving. You have the subject property which was 105 about the street in this example and it has various components about that property listed. And then you have three comparable sales and this one in 13th Grove Street, the crazier, noted some differences. Sorry about that. So for example, here where the building size and gross living area was 162 feet larger for the property that's sold for $250,000. They had done that by taking it to $150,000 and subtracting $4,100 to figure out what that would be if the same buyer were to buy a house that had 160 feet less first. And they do the same thing for the fact that there's no basement in the first one, so there is one in the second one. And the difference between whether there's a windstone or not a windstone on that. So these are some of the critical elements that get evaluated. The next one is the income approach. And while we're not going to talk about how you do the income approach, it's important that you understand that the income approach is actually being applied in some of the properties that you're looking at when you're comparing other properties to your own. So the income approach is typically in Burlington. You're building for a multi-family residential unit or four or more units. Because those are more typically bought by investors as opposed to someone who wants to be limited in their residential, primary residence. It's typically used for commercial and industrial properties. And it's used by estimating the price that a property would sell or make money out of income that it would produce. And that's when it purchases and then applies to capitalization rates or a rate of return or a profit rate. Typical for that kind of investment. It's very important that you know that a property is being assessed using the income approach. Because while the assessor's card may show a building in a land about to be broken out from the list of cards, they're not accurate for comparing another property. I don't know how it gets in there. It's a little informational or something. But that's not what's actually used to determine the value of some properties. Excuse me for one second. I can show you an example of the peril of comparing an income approach to a property to one that it's not under the income approach. This is a decision from an opinion that we made last year. We've had a couple of these. This is just an illustration of it. But the taxpayer in this case presented us with a commercial property with $26,000 square feet. For the land was assessed at $143,000. But the era was only $4,000 square feet. And it's as higher as $232,000. They said this just doesn't make sense. And it doesn't make sense if you think that the property that was $26,000 was assessed using the cost approach and that you're adding the building to the land value. Because they're done differently, you're just going to get yourself in trouble if you try to compare an apple to an orange in this situation. John, anything on those three approaches before we get into the complicated statutory one? No, I think you're doing a good job. The income approach is done by apartment buildings and other commercial properties. And the cost approach was widely used for all other residential properties. The sales comparison approach was used when there was a review or an appeal as a review of how does it relate to the cost approach. I think that's what I would add. When they come into session, they write these statutes and so they have some specific carve-outs for particular properties and how they would like to see them assessed on the grant list. Do you have perpetual lease plans, which are plans that you never own if they're just potentially leased? We have some of those in Burlington, they're much more common. There's also the mills, wine, coalsage of wine, areas and coal chester here. We'll see those. We have subsidized housing, which is the Section 8 housing and similar programs built by special rules. You have a statute dealing with housing, subsidy, covenants or the land trust properties, what we think of them here, and then about condos and houses. Solar panels and projects are treated separately. Current use is a very big issue in most of Vermont, but Burlington I think lands do current use properties, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on current use here. And then veterans also get exemptions. It's done differently from town to town. In Burlington, we don't actually change the assessment that's done on the tax bill. So that's given an exception of $10,000 and I think surviving unmarried spouses of veterans get up to $40,000, but you won't see that on the grant list here. You'll see that done in the tax bill. So the most common ones that you'll see in Burlington are the statutory exceptions for subsidized housing. So this is where people square or never home or something like that has a property that has people in it that are rented in Section 8 or similar programs. So it's similar to the income approach, but the thing to be careful about is that it may be less than four units and it's still qualified. So his initial square has a few places. They're being assessed using a special model that is not cost-approaching, similar to a privately owned complex right-hand store. And then the other one that's a lot of people love is the subsidy component property, otherwise known as the land trust property. That is basically the legislature is determined that they should get a 30% or 30 to 40% discount on the assessed value of their property because it's being a land trust property. So the key to make sure that you don't do is compare an assessment of one of these types of properties when you're looking at evaluating what's a fair assessment of your property. So how do you identify whether something is one of these kinds of properties? So on the list of cards we're going to talk about this pretty soon. Up in the upper left-hand corner you'll have the name and address of the property of the property owner and there's a statement that says land trust holds to this block. So that means that that property is assessed using the special land trust formula and not the formula that's used for regular single family homes or in this case it's an economy. An income approach property can have a special section on the list of cards that have an income approach. And this is not shown on any list of cards that don't use the income approach. And then subsidized housing property is timidly you can only tell, I can only tell John may have a special method of buying new homes to property. So if he's a square CHT he's probably under that. Family home is sometimes the property owner you know something like Monroe Street LLC but the mailing address is always 125 thank you which is where family home is. John do you have another special way to identify that on the list of cards? I have to say you'll notice those values are lower than the others. Yeah that's it. Yeah we have a code for them. Can I ask a question there? We just saw the list of cards which show here's a land trust property. What's the name of that field where it says land trust home? That's a name. I don't know what the name of the field is. So it says type below the address. Yeah it's a property it's a label for a property type and below the address. That's all I needed. It's so difficult to come up with right values to my property. There's no practical considerations to keep in mind. There's over 10,000 property parcels in Burlington and nearly every property is different. There are some places where the entire tract of homes are exactly the same and Burlington is not one of those places. And even if you get into some of the larger convenient complex like the quarter of a college battery or Wesley or river watch there can be quite a difference in value between the second floor level of the house of the condo and the fifth floor level of the condo facing west of Burlington East. So the property is different. About 500 to 1,500 property transfers happen each year. Now that's not arm's length bonafide sale transactions and somebody who's got a go through job office doesn't go through and figure out which of those many transactions are just estate planning or some other reason and which ones are an actual exposed to market bonafide sales comparison to use for their comparison purpose. But there's about 1,000 zoning permits and 1,800 building permits issued in Burlington every year and about 30% of those are for not small projects for over 25,000. So somebody's got to evaluate and determine whether or not that makes a difference in whether property should be valued at. Market prices do, of course, constantly changing and there's a change in desirability of certain types of property over others. Sometimes condominiums are more popular and the increase in value of your property is mainly on some time to see other way around. So looking at the appeal timeframe we wanted to do this seminar now because it's very timely. The grand list got launched on May 7th and so notice is what it's called out and people think that the value of your property changed and they should be getting those around now and so the deadline to file an appeal with the board of assessors is May 19th or 14 days after the grand list gets launched and that's just statewide. If you appeal to the board of assessors by the 19th and they hear your appeal and they don't, you're not satisfied with the outcome you have up to 14 days after the decision by the board of assessors which is a written decision to appeal to the board of tax appeal. We'll hear their case and after that once we get your written decision and send it to you, you have 30 days after that within 30 days to appeal to the next level which is either the state or the decision of property valuation. One thing that is important here is that you don't need to wait for any of these specific timelines because what you see is just a bear that you think that if the assessor was aware of it the grand list could get effected or your property system could get effected and so that's why you say you can come in and visit John any time for the staff and point out something about your property that you think should be effected. John, anything that you want to add to that kind of frame? I'm not exactly sure, for example, do they have to appeal to the board of assessors through the assessor's office or can they just come to some open sessions? Can you talk about that? Yes, thanks for pointing this out. Right now is the open time to file an appeal and the board of assessors will be hearing their appeals from the 23rd to the 27th of this month and we have an online filing system so you can go online to our website look for the board of assessor's appeal hearings and you can fill your appeal out online by stating your name, your contact information where your property is located and highlight the points of your appeal and you can also attach attachments to it if you have evidence of, say, like an appraisal done by the bank or other things that are helpful, photos, that type of thing. So we suggest that people do that. You can still do a walk-in during the hearings however, if the schedule is full, you may not get heard so we always try to encourage people to file online memorialize the opportunity to have a hearing but if there's time, if it's early enough in the year we like to do a review ahead of time and then if we agree and we make some adjustments then you can withdraw the appeal and you won't need to move any further and we also want to correct factual information so that's the beginning point is making sure that what is there is correct and then after that there might be a discussion or a disagreement or an agreement about the valuation and you have to go to the Board of Assessors first to move on to the next, so you can't jump the process. I'm all set. First thing about understanding how the Assessors value your property is to find your list of cards and take a look at it. So to find your list of cards you go to the city's website right here for us at BC.gov and in the upper section of the page you'll see a tab for rental and property info and so you select that one and it brings you to a page where you can search for the property you can search by address, owner name, parcel number, et cetera put in the address that you're searching for here and search the property address and then you'll bring up those cards that has a lot of information so one of the tabs at the top of that page is the set of record cards so select that and that brings you to your actual list of card or record card Can you go back a second? Can I catch that? What is the to the right of city of city Burlington the third thing that's circled what does it say? It says rental and property info rental and property info I apologize, I just said this earlier you're going to have access to this entire slide that is actually obvious on your website now under the ad hoc re-embracing of the committee page I'll probably make it a little bit more prominent somewhere but if you want to just get this window overview and then go back and look at those cards online afterwards you can actually look at all of these slides and print them out Alan, if I may add two times a year we update the property data so we just recently updated the property data last week because we put out 450 notices and we also had which takes a whole weekend updated all the property record cards and put them online as well and that takes a little more effort but you'd be able to look at all your property data all your neighbor's property data hopefully sales we always direct people towards sales and you can print off your property record card and review that you said you sent out 450 notices yes this week I got one of those why am I 450 special? I don't know you specifically but the changes that we've made are if people have had additions or renovations or done stuff it's usually because of that it's not a special reappraisal that was last year once you identify and look at your list of cards we're going to take a look at the various parts of it so this is the first page of the front page and this is my list of cards so as it's an upper left corner you have the property address and you have the final assessment which is determined from the building and the land and the extra items that are in the table to the left of that and then you have a land section here we're going to go into this land section in more detail but though one thing that I want you to note here where the turns are pointing there that is the assessment district that we're going to be talking about and that's exactly where you find it in this card one thing that we want to point out though is that there is a comparable sales section on the list of cards and this confuses a lot of people because it's not actually it's not the sales that were used to determine your building this is something that is some research data or something maybe John could explain it better but we do not have the actual sales so if you go look at those sales it won't be satisfied that they sell those values of your property that's an aside I talked about the assessment districts and the city has divided into various areas that have some unique features to govern characteristics that are similar to their neighbors and so for example if you look at the city here the Old North End it has a slightly different value than the Northern Hill section or the southern districts or one thing that's important to see here is where the cursor is here in the south end that's the waterfront 10 that's the waterfront properties down in the south coast and then here when you get into the New North End all on present beach and arbitrary points those properties just because of sales and statistics they sell for values that are different than half a mile away in the New North End and so those districts are an important part of what the sort of base value for the land itself and it has some influence on the building value as well John, anything you want to add on that? No, you did a great job I would suggest if you're looking for sale sole properties try to look in the neighborhood where you reside where the subject property is Good question those land assessment districts since the no reassessment had happened for 16 years were the same land assessment districts the basis of the 2005 assessments or have they changed for the new the reassessment in 2021? Well I can answer that Yeah the assessment districts by and large stayed the same what we wanted to do was combine some of them that were very similar and also in the same location because I think they were too broken out in the past to run statistical measures so we did some combining of certain areas if you're looking for a house in the south end you're looking for a house in the south end necessarily one particular area of that area and it's really based on valuation and property makeup and school district and those things that lead to that values for those areas so your answer is yes and no on some level there was a little bit of tweaking and some analysis but by and large they are similar to what they were moved but some of the districts have been called I mean we've seen some gentrification in some areas and development in other areas yeah some areas that by nature of where they are get a change in value from the basic base value for that and so I live in one of those of Lake Bucharest so Lake Bucharest in the LVT-9 district which is right here which has a large mass but it's really Lake Bucharest and it's going to take in Cameron Rise in the LVT-9 district itself there's a difference between whether you're on the west side or the east side of Lake Bucharest so on the east side is the basic rate of the LVT-9 and what you're seeing here is on the west side all of the properties on the west side have this positive influence of 70% because the sales demonstrate that properties on the west side sell for more than the ones that are on the east side a similar situation is in the life of the district if you have a house on Cameron, Charlotte Caroline, Margaret, or Marion the mere fact that the address itself is one of those addresses to your door to buy it and pay more for it then for example Hayward Street which I think is just the nicest street it doesn't get the same sales prices that the five sisters' neighborhoods do and so when you're looking at something value of a comparable property that might be comparable take a look at these to make sure that you're comparing apples to albums sometimes the sales comparisons may be quite different John, I can't quite read, is there a way of identifying the geography of those neighborhoods is it on that sheet or is there a map? Well he was showing a map earlier these sub-neighborhoods no they're not they're not separated out what we found is that certain there's little areas that are a little more desirable within the overall area of the assessment district so to speak which is kind of like a neighborhood and so sometimes it's an entire street or an entire side of the street and sometimes there's particular to a particular property so properties can have slopes, ravines, wetlands, flood plains proximity to economic detriment like if your house is across the street from the mill generating plant it's not going to have the same value as the property that is you know even four or five blocks away from that so here's an example that we have of the east side of Common Square it's up against the the intervail and so there are lots and to go back the property is not buildable long and so it's not fair to assess them or their price wouldn't get the same the dual coverage they can have on a buildable part it's very helpful to not only optimize land and keep other people modifying it in a lot of peer-reviewed things like that so there is a change in value reduction in value at this point here's another example underneath there is Elbow Street can anybody know where Elbow Street is from? no I just get an honor but see maybe you're just stretching ahead so Elbow Street is all the way out to our Avenue half past four down here on the north Avenue extension you turn left at the water treatment plant and go across the light path and down into the lake the property when I say into the lake it floods a lot so again it's not valueless you put an RV there for three or four months out of the year it lives right on the lake but it doesn't have the same value as another property in the north as once so that you could build a year-round house without worrying about it so that's something about the land side this is your card look at the building side now here you'll see on the top left corner you have a building style which is important for starting a big race of what the property should be value at you have something called building quality and building condition that we're going to go into much more detail about and then you have building component coming back coming back what is the the quality grade of the kitchen the bathroom things like that so we'll then sketch it up for a calculation area and so one of the things we're going to talk about is correcting the data that the assessor has this is a good place to make sure that that's correct because people sometimes do a mission and they were going to do an addition and they didn't and so they got a zoning permit that never got done this is an important thing to make sure that this card is correct is that right along with the assessment evaluation so I said the building style matters in setting the base so here is the table that is used to set the base and you can see that on the top of the video $150 or $120 but it starts at a higher base than a ranch which is maybe under $60 a lot of them are right around that $60 so it's not a huge driver necessarily of what the building value is and then the component properties that are used in that I think the building sketch in some area captures the square footage and the value for those square footage and what you can see is that an unfinished basement attributes very little value compared to a finished first floor and so getting those things accurate is part of the best way to make sure that your assessment is correct all of those things you can put into that algorithm and there is something called the count ladder which shows on the list of cards or to understand about this it includes a lot of information it shows a lot of information that is helpful to understanding different steps of the calculation but all of the figures in the calculation aren't there don't be frustrated by trying to multiply things in coming up with everything that is shown on the count ladder this is again just the subset and some of the information that goes into what the cost approach is determining is your value so this is a very important topic that we deal with a lot as a board of tactics and it is something that is common in a lot of commodity facts which is that once you get to a critical side there is not a plan to have a building lost and not a house to have a kitchen and a bathroom additional units of size increase the value of the property but the incremental value of each additional increment is less than the prior one and the result is that you end up with a lower average value per total unit which is called the division cost curve so again a lot of words and I will simply say you can go to Fletcher and buy a one-acre building lot for $25,000 you can buy 100 acres of very similar land and it only costs you $100,000 which is only $2,000 per acre so understand that that is happening both with your land size when you are comparing a lot that is maybe $5,000 per acre and also building cost comparing a property that has 2,000 feet of finished square footage that wasn't had 4,000 square foot the building value should be higher so the price per square foot is going to be lower so the assessment office uses a a table that is derived from a sales experience you need to either try to create your own table or you can just use properties that are very similar to yours in terms of building size both finished and unfinished and then land size John I'm starting to think like what you may want to say sure you are doing such a great job there is nothing to add but that's a great example we often get folks that come in and they say they use the price per square foot analogy and I say well your house is 1,000 square feet you are comparing it to houses that are 2,000 square feet and that's why they have a lower price per square foot but they have a higher value so I encourage them to try to find other houses of the same size but there is a lot of other factors unfortunately that go into valuation quality condition being major and components and location of course so what approach that people use is the challenging uniformity of the cost approach outcome and this is where again we are talking about challenging the price per square foot land finished space they basically come down to my neighbor's house is nicer why? challenging your assessment by comparing the assessment of other properties is generally the least successful house and why is that? first and foremost most people come in with a table or a chart that shows 4 or 5 or 6 maybe 10 elements of the property and they are comparing them and as you saw from the assessment algorithm there is many many more things than 3 or more elements and so if you included all of the elements for each of the properties the result would be possible to be consistent it's also the case that from a home just straight up from hinted us from using the assessment value of somebody else's property to determine the bare market value of your property to determine the sales of property the assessment value is not confusing but it is not something that could be used to value 4 or 5 where does what's called equalization and in what form ever does that apply? we'll talk about that soon this is using the top approach for your benefit this is technically the easiest and most effective route identify any incorrect data on your chart document anything that's different something that's steep until or half of it's on your land identify zoning permits that have been pulled but not performed often in the case of you think you have some room and you never build them identify all of them that have been removed we have people coming and say what's going on here? show us a photograph and that you can also re-evaluate the building grade conditions and results of depreciation a little comment we'll get into that before it gets old don't be surprised if you want to say that something isn't there like a pole something a great condition and distribution can be a little bit of a vocabulary question grade is the quality that it helps determine the base cost that you start with when determining the value of a building structure and there's several different grades here's some examples of the definition but it starts with very good grade actually I think there's an excellent comment about this then you can see it go down you average, bear, and pour and so you can read those definitions and try and determine what is most appropriate for your property condition is the sentiment deterioration of the building so some buildings are very well maintained and some buildings have not been as well maintained and so the condition of a building is something that determines the degree of deterioration or depreciation of the building so the depreciation is determined by a table which is here's also on the table and says what is the condition and how many years old is the property and that determines the level of depreciation so a couple of things the depreciation maxes out at your so there's no difference in the depreciation for a building that is seven years old and one that's 100 years old makes sense for a building maxes out at what age what do you max out at what age 50 years old depreciation and those items are shown here on your list of cards so this is the building side and it shows the grade of this building is good the building condition is good and the resulting depreciation at the year built, the age built the resulting depreciation is 22% so here you take the unappreciated value qualified by 22% you get $167,000 of depreciation for a resulting depreciated value of $595 so you can see that a few points difference here can make a good difference on the bottom line so it's important that we get these correct and it's also an area that is often white-red don't any of you want to add about the color of this issue yeah the building grade is workmanship and materials and how it's built and that's a quality grading and that matters for value condition also as well that is wear and tear overall physical condition if you were to go back a slide most houses have 30% depreciation if they're over 50 years old and they're in average condition and that is applied if there's renovations and it's better than the typical of the area then it would be good or very good or if it's showing more than the average wear and tear I think the definitions that you had earlier our averages in Burlington our houses need a little more work than what that statement shows but you get the gist of it the definitions you've got to get a sense of where your physical depreciation should belong and we can review that and hopefully get it right question this idea of the grade the quality of materials and workmanship who determines that if nobody ever comes out to see my house how does that determine the quality and grade of workmanship and materials well we'd be happy to come out and see your house if you like but usually what has happened is it was determined earlier at some other point and houses don't change dramatically regarding its overall quality unless there's been extensive renovations and so forth and updating physical condition can change quite a bit but usually houses stay about the same quality for a long time so the building permit that got pulled your office looks at the kinds of materials and the rating of the quality of workmanship of the contractors we kind of look at it as an overall we're not making 25 checkpoints it's more of a general overview hi what we're talking about here is some elements on the property like concrete slabs and steps and that sort of thing this is referring to buildings we're focused on the building right now we got Alan we'll we'll go ahead and we'll answer questions towards the end yep so the approach of using the cost approach to your bathroom is to identify things that you think that the assessor knew that you would change his opinion next is the sales approach sales comparison approach so there's a couple ways to do the sales comparison approach one is the higher professional average and there are two of them that we see in most office one is a fee appraisal like the person who ever came out with the bank if you purchased your property and they sent a fee appraiser out they prepared a professional fee to us and that is a valid sales comparison approach in the most part realtor provided a opinion of that and these are often very valuable but it's much more helpful if your realtor is for example very familiar with a particular economy they can say I've been in the 12 units sold in the past 18 months and this one is geared in that factor you can also just have a realtor put together a package that doesn't do much help at all and that may give us some information but much more persuasive to have something that has particularized information about the property and they're very similar to your other you can also do it yourself you'd want to identify comparable sales to use you want to identify the components of each of those properties that sold as well as your subject and then adjust for the differences between the your property and comparable sales so where do you find comparable sales that are most relevant so the state of the law department taxes has the listing of all of those arm length transactions in the past I think three years obviously years are more relevant and you can find them here in the state of the law department taxes website more recent property transfer tax returns that are filed in city hall in order to do it wasn't the bank arranger made and identify the key components of described reasonable values and differences to be able to explain why you think the fireplace is worth two thousand dollars compared to the one without a fireplace and make the adjustment and you're looking to make sure that your adjustment isn't too large so you're not saying that something that sold for two thousand dollars means that yours is only worth one hundred and three thousand dollars that would be a very large adjustment and if it's not what you think how it looks from other comparable something that is more likely to be comparable so this is the key of Granger's example when the city assessor does a sales comparison report this is what has looked like there's much detail about how the values are different but if you learn how to read it that is what it's showing the difference between the comparable sale and how it affects the resulting value of the how do we talk could you go back to the slide where you showed the actual URL for the state department of taxes website where we can look for the comps thank you go ahead, thank you again this presentation is online on the assessor at Hawkins so we said we talked about equalization probably the best is to describe it in the catch-a-dory versus how to list.j we need to make sure that the list is back and meeting what it said on the trend list that corresponds to the listed value of the property and this is a new step procedure first we determine the bare market value of the listed property to equalize it to ensure that the property is listed comparably with other properties in town so for example if all the properties that are selling for $100,000 are listed on my grand list at $90,000 property should be listed and the important to note is for the entire class of property so sometimes people will come in and say I have seen an example of where the property sold at 75% or was listed at 75% of what it actually sold for so the equalization rate must be 75% determined it has to be a broader and basically all of if you're comparing a single family house all of the single family home sales in the community all of the states that same place that the sale work it's the box that's above that you can get the equalization rate for any town and by the way this works for any town in the state these after the office may have a more current ratio this is published in December and so by June or July you may want to check with them if they have a different rate do you have anything they want to comment about equalization? it's nice that you're showing an independent resource we work with the state of Vermont for education funding on all the sales that occur in Burlington and they run their equalization study for purposes of education distribution funding throughout the state of Vermont all the municipalities in the state of Vermont and it helps with who's paying what how much money is going to be received by every town and so forth their study I'd have to point out is a little bit of a lagging indicator the market is as we know right currently has been moving quite dramatically in the upward so I think it's a lagging study a little bit but it is helpful to learn from another outside source and then we may say yes good but we can do we know a better ratio we've come up with a certain ratio but they're going to be similar most likely so you decided hey I think I should have filled my assessment what are the steps that you would take so first and foremost gather your information review your list of cards understand the information that the assessor has and then identify how you want to go about presenting an appeal one is like I said use the cost approach to your benefit and that might correct data on the list of cards and come forward and tell us where's the correct and why should make a difference and is to pursue the sales comparison approach either through a professional or by yourself in which case you want to in a buy-in document the comparable sales that you think should affect your case and then prepare your assessment draw out exactly what it is that you think the difference is and how you would show it and then you would file a notice agreement before the assessor again in this year by no later than May 19 to be just assured to the pool of assessor so when you appeal to the board of assessors I'll let you take over of who's on the board and how that process to complete work so we hope that people that want to appeal file online we get the information in a spreadsheet we contact folks we schedule them and we'll start scheduling next week hopefully we'll reach out to some people that have filed and be able to to meet with them more informally but the board right now there's a vacancy for one person to be on the board and the other person's been on the board about five or six years now Jonathan Chapel Sokol who is a retired IBM engineer he's very fantastic he loves statistics and what we do is we have a hearing it's casual we ask for information we review the record card and then we go and we conduct a review based on the information that we have and oftentimes we do additional review anyways we start looking at sales ourselves we don't want to do all the work we want the owners come in with some evidence other than just I want to appeal my property value and then in mid-June probably actually towards the last week of June because of a workload we send out a notice of here's our decision and we have tried in the past last year it was too busy but you actually write up a write up about our review and our findings so you get more than just here's the new value or here's the no adjustment and no reason and then you have 14 days to move to the next level if you decide to most people are satisfied and they don't move on that's that process and then if you do move on you might meet Alan across the table and that's more quasi-judicial right so we are a quasi-judicial hearing and so if you're dissatisfied with the decision by the board of investors you can file a appeal to the board of tax appeals with the city clerk's office or there may be an online portal not sure if that's going to get sent out this year the board is made up of seven residents of Robertson and we've come from a variety of backgrounds homeowners carbon owners, investors realtor people who are appointed by city council with merit residing and we do have what vacancy on the board this year coming into this season the initial submission is the process is that we would get your notice until we would set a formal hearing date and so you would hopefully get notice of that at least 30 days before the hearing and then you're required to submit what you want us to review at least 10 days before your hearing so you get a couple of weeks to get it together and then to the city clerk's office and then the assessor will review what you submit and know less than three days before the actual hearing he will submit a response and you'll get the response to look at before you come to a hearing so when there is a hearing before the board to wait and start a swarm it is more formal it gets up to 10 minutes each to present what they think we should know about how to value the property and at that meeting we'll decide whether or not the same visit is appropriate and if so we'll schedule a same visit at that time to actually come and walk the property and look at it now one thing that comes up is what happens if you file a deal and you don't intend to hear it if you don't intend to hear it and you don't tell us that you would ruin advance then we're going to value the property and if it's something that's very simple like, you know, being assessed $10,000 for a pool that hasn't been there for a year and a half and even if we do a site visit and you see it's not there you didn't need to be present to hear what you want the value can't go up, down, or stay the same so it's important that you know that the if you do a tenant hearing it doesn't result in a default of your computer's expense we will go ahead, we're required by law to go ahead and make evaluations as though you were there and then finally you're required to get our visits and it's submitted by December 31st so if the appeal from the assessor's office comes to us in July then we hear those cases of default and we get a decision out before the end of the year if you're still not satisfied with the court of tax appeal of the decision there are two steps to consider for A and for B so it's a fork in the road you get to decide whether or not you want to appeal to the Department of Taxes to the property evaluation interview the notice of appeal needs to be filed we get 30 days of the decision by the court of tax appeals we're accompanied by a payment of 70 dollars we can expect to have a status conference with a hearing officer who is a Vermont real estate appraiser is that correct John? Are they currently licensed? Are they online? They all have they're not licensed but they are appraisers they've taken the courses that they need to take to the required position I'm thinking it's time for these cases you can expect a status conference with them perhaps a site visit which is likely to be possible at that stage and then there would be a final hearing trial where you put on your evidence what the value of the property should be and then a written decision comes from that the alternative is to go to the spirit court so you would file to go to the civil division of the spirit court and those appeals again need to be filed within 30 days of the decision from the court of tax appeals accompanied by a payment of 295 dollars the current you can expect that they'll start with a status conference everybody and try to figure out what they need to do to resolve the case each site is that discovery and the question or document there will be a trial and then the court will issue a decision and either the decision of the spirit court or of the division of property valuation interview can be a deal for you you can make this goal in the long time but yes does landscaping influence the value of the property you can Jordan, I'll go ahead that's a good question because there's a certain amount of landscaping that we put an overall value on property when we do a land value and it's typically includes landscaping and so forth and if it's an undeveloped lot we usually knock that value down a little bit because it doesn't have the landscaping it's extensive we don't have a factor for landscaping we don't break it out into pieces where you've got some nice bushes and you have a fence we don't have assessment on that yeah so we're talking like that yes there's built-in adjustments for sheds and things like that so you appeal to get a result again the final decision to be higher lower the same as the current assessment your tax bill will be retroactively revised for the effect in the year so if we don't make a decision we're 31st and your assessment started back in July so you made your August and your November payment you can anticipate that if there was a change you would get a revised tax bill sometime hopefully in order to make the correct payment for the marked tax payment if you continue to make payments and if your rate went down the last two payments will be less and if your rate went up then your last two payments would be higher and it is important to notice that future appeals are limited by the city charter so then the provision of the city charter says that the decision of forward and past appeals is not further appealed or further appealed and found to be valid not only the grand year the grand list would be taxed but also the subsequent two years unless there's been a substantial change or any reoccurring so that pretty much wraps up what we wanted to say today there are some additional resources that are out there again this presentation will be posted at the city's website under I noted to see the assessment page under the ad hoc sub-page it may be other places later but for lots of experience the state office has a lot of resources for how to appeal your property tax and how to hear appeals as a warrant of some authority or as a warrant list so it's the same information and you can see both sides of the table and figure out where you want to be the law department also has video seminars on how to create property under law for the grand list listeners in many towns are elected officials and so they get their training from the the Department of Taxes and they post their training seminars on the website so thank you all for coming out tonight thanks for bearing with us I visited by our dear friend of the COVID and I didn't want to share him with you so I couldn't be there in person but do you have any other questions now that you've had time do you call them? I'd like to know how often there will be new assessments in the future like every three years every five years do you have a plan? yeah but the last one was too long according to state statute it's based on statistical measures and if you don't meet certain statistical measures of equity then you're mandated and then you may get mandated but then you have to go through a whole process of finding a company to do the conduct of work and then they may be two years out so it's a long process I'm hoping that we have more frequent reappraisals so that they're not as difficult more frequent reappraisals although that's more work up front it makes things a lot easier and so who knows maybe the law will change or something will happen we'll have to do them every five years I would welcome that and that would be better there's some states that do them every year some states that do them every three years and others state of Vermont and you don't need certain statistical measures well we did last reappraisal in 2005 I'm making a long story longer we were in an up market and then the market dipped slightly and stayed steady for a handful of years and then it started edging up and then more recently it just really exponentialed up and so that's the when we did the reappraisal at that point we were told to do the reappraisal in I think 2017-2018 I have in relation to that the timing of the reappraisal it was my understanding that there was some balance to be made between the commercial property assessments and the residential property assessments and the data that was used on the commercial property assessments was the worst year that ever happened was 2020 when half the businesses were closed so my understanding is that the commercial values by and large all decreased while the residential values to a large extent increased and has anything been done to try to correct that inequity well first up your perception is a little bit flawed it's a little bit right at the same time the market did increase the market was it the market for residential properties has been increasing since 2010 but it's been accelerating more recently so that is just a fact of the market demand lack of supply rates mortgage rates going down commercial properties tend to appreciate over time at less than single family homes so even if we had done the reappraisal in 2017 2018 there would still be some adjustment there would still be some appreciation of commercial properties but not to the extent of residential single family homes condos and so forth duplexes commercial properties some commercial properties were not affected by technically COVID at all some types of properties were office buildings were retail was movie theaters others that were not affected at all drug stores drug stores, correct industrial hotels were greatly affected and those values should reflect what they would sell for at the time of the reappraisal April 1st, 2021 the uncertainty in the market would dampen those values so that said we have made efforts to revalue a lot of those properties and we surveyed them and we if there was a hearing we asked them has your property had a cash flow because they're based on value they're based on the cash flow to value has your rental rates been adjusted have you had greater normal than normal vacancies are your expenses higher we asked those questions and we adjusted values based on that we have adjusted all of those properties this year from a list that we have we reviewed all of them and we sent out new income and expense forms received a whole bunch of them not 100% of course and we've made adjustments to them overall with the commercial properties commercial properties but we did not revalue all the commercial properties this year and but we did value some of the ones that were truly affected all the hotels some of the retail on Long Church Street had no effect so to speak in their fully occupied during the whole time they might have had some they might have had some PPP money but others actually had some vacancies and they noted it to us and so we went back and we checked how's your occupancy now how's your cash flow and we have adjusted those upward because now they're stabilized again that's how we looked at it but not adjusted the residential portion downward to balance out the increase in commercial no we're not adjusting the residential after one year basically doing a second reappraisal no that would cost another million dollars sorry and I'll get you next whoever whoever would like to speak if we're I'm trying to do a self done assessment with sales columns yeah thank you am I looking for a value as of today or a value as of the reassessment of four twenty twenty one well ideally state law would be as of today April 1st of each year would be the most ideal I don't know if I'm trying to differentiate between properties so I look at the value of my home I look at the value of reasonable comps then you suggest that if we're going to do that then we adjust for differences do you publish any table that says something like if it's air conditioned or not adjust this much if it's like this adjust that much is there anything that can help me look at features and have a sense of how much to adjust that's the challenge when you're not I'm sure you're an expert in many things but you're not expert in valuations like how do we do that what do you do here some of the biggest components would be like quality condition size and location other things matter less they still matter but other things matter less and so if you hit the bigger points making adjustments for differences that's the best thing you can do but the most similar properties are the best and you can suggest look at the sale of this particular property mind you our difference between if you're talking about single family homes now they're at about 90% of market over the course of this past year they've gone up about 10% so we would look at how recent the sales are and adjust for time and then we would equalize that because it's not fair to reassess you at today's market we need to equalize it to the reappraisal year basically April 1st 2021 or basically apply that downward factor if you want to use sales right around the reappraisal date then without adjusting we could look at that we could look at it different ways but the courts would require you to look at it as a April 1st what's the market value and what's the equalization that should be applied but I don't think most people don't go to court they come to us and most cases are resolved so the four big things were quality, condition, size and location yeah there would be some other things too like is the basement finished or is there an attached garage or no garage you know that things like that as well I would add to that Tom are certainly able to how much certain things cost and what not but it's really a matter if you're coming with a reasonable argument and that is what it's going to be persuasive I would spend a lot of money or effort just be reasonable so you know you have people on the court that are real that are investors and if you come in and say that your little hockey branches in New York that need to do a roof and that's $90,000 we're not going to find that but if you come in and you say I'll talk to a couple people and this is what it would cost to fix the deteriorated wall and that should be factored in to my assessment those are the kind of things that are persuasive to a citizen board like that yes and we're the first step the board of assessors before you get to meet Alan who does a really fantastic job and we're the same way we first want to make sure that the factual information that we have relates to the property that you have and we want to make at least those corrections and then focus on the market of what the property would sell for equalized at this point and I think you had we had a lot of hands but I want to go around the room appropriately sir earlier on you mentioned an example of a property it was a deep property but a cliff down to the interval and it seemed to lower the value with the non-buildability of the part of the lot always lowers the value I have a significant part of my property it's in the deed that nothing can be built and I don't think it's the same as the properties anywhere around I don't know if that is a plus or minus or what's the thing about that and would it be on the car I just don't know well you'd have to explain it more deeply yes if you have a lot that you can't build on has a different value than a lot that can be built on but sometimes someone might say well I have a right away over the last five feet of my property it's in the far back there's nothing you're going to do anyways it's like well maybe there's not much of an effect on that so I get also I think that they're kind of individual cases but if you know if it's significantly if it's apparent that it is hindering something that could make the property better in a true way then it has a big impact but you know I've heard people say well I got this right away it's on the last three feet of my property I'd be like well that doesn't have much of an effect on the build because you're not it's just a reasonable thing it's a reasonable thing would that factor be on the property card yeah probably should be if it has an impact just like if you have a very steep bank and we look at a lot say if the lot is 5,000 square feet and the values of 5,000 square foot lots in this neighborhood are a hundred thousand dollars and you have a lot that is can hold a house and has a small backyard but then the steep bank drops off and so the lot is really the usable part of the lot is smaller there would be a discount on that property thank you didn't the lister card with that introduced with this recent appraisal was that a new concept or have lister cards always been there for monitors like calling them lister cards I call them property data cards there have been assessor cards we've had those we've had property data online for probably 15 years now we print cards off people ask people used to come in but now you get everything online now it's not a new thing and if you go to Colchester or any other municipality they would have lister cards as well now was the grade and the condition and depreciation was that there before or did that change with this appraisal now there's cost approach takes into consideration elements that make up value and so that is not a new concept it's been around even before I started this work and so it's been something that's been around for a long time and it's been applied to properties my property before was probably a re-appraisal property was valued at about 600,000 but this rating like I got it ended up with a rating of excellent after that rating was put on our property went to 1.1 million just for the re-appraisal and so it seemed to me that something wasn't there before but was there afterwards because the 600,000 made sense because that's about what it cost to build the house and I actually built the house so I know that so it struck me as being a big shock and I'm afraid all of a sudden have $500,000 added to the value of our house just because it was new I think I understand what happened here a lot of the data is the same data that was there prior to the re-appraisal and the company that we hired re-examines everything they go through and they redo based on multiple regression based on building an algorithm based on the sales they rebuild the depreciation schedule as well as other things so it's a multi-plicated formula they have a base cost and then they have multipliers pluses or minuses that make up the overall value and their depreciation table what might have been considered as we're talking about condition right excellent condition for an older house might have been something if it's a significantly older house might have been something around 10% and then the new one might be like 3% so there's the factor maybe changing that and so we've had to look at a lot of a lot of our appeals were based on folks that had done some work back in 2006, 2007, 2008 and we applied it and everyone thought it was totally fair and moved on and then we do a re-appraisal and the formula for depreciation is tweaked and maybe that stuff that worked in 2007 say so to speak is not so fresh and new and it really should be closer to average average good so that's something that I've seen with appeals in our review and that might be the case for you because we had an old house we had to tear down completely eliminate and built a new house and we know exactly how much we spent so it seems like the big jump was because of the excellent rating and the loss of any depreciation well you should come in have you filed an appeal? you should do that and also if we have time we'll do a review ahead of time but file the appeal I suggest everyone files their appeal because you can always withdraw it if we are able to attend and address the points that you're making anyone have any other questions or Alan sorry my last part of that question was who decides what grade it is and what condition it is well at this point our office does your office we will yeah exactly and then the reappraisal was that done by the company the consulting company Tyler Technologies they have a reappraisal division and they they made a lot of the decisions obviously we walked through the whole process with them they had a a modeler that has been doing it for many many years he's done much bigger municipalities in Burlington Hartford, Connecticut Portland, Maine like those types of places and I think he did a fantastic job however it's sometimes the data may be wrong about a particular property and it may be wrong about a particular property that is down the road that everyone points to so we get a lot of that I was on the website and I think that it shows the deadline for appeal for this round it has the 20th it's the 20th it's okay Alan it was the 19th no offense it's the 20th I was like I'll let that one go if it was the other way around I would have made a point but it was in your favor so I moved here 15 months ago my welcome was here's your new assessment and it was more than twice what the prior assessment was so I looked at that and it was $70,000 more than I had paid for the house so I made an appeal and I got back a denial of my appeal but no explanation whatsoever and then I called your office and spoke to a young man whose name I have written down but they said gee like you said your introduction they generally provide some detail some rationale for why they denied my appeal but they didn't and I sat around waited for one and missed a deadline to go meet Alan but I had submitted the HUD 1 form for my purchase and the Bank of America appraisal so eventually somebody forwarded this to the manager of the Tyler Company who sent back an email which got forwarded to me that said oh we didn't have to adjust this guy's assessed value because it was only 8% above the market value and I looked at that and said well you know I'm not happy to pay 8% more than the list price in the grocery store why am I paying 8% more that and they said oh they don't have to adjust it unless it was 10% more than the market value where did those numbers come from and the new assessment I got in the mail last week was based on the accuracy of last year's assessment which I failed to appeal to Alan because this cockamamie 8% is okay idea was what I heard from the manager of Tyler so how can that how can you make me happier well you should file your appeal and you should meet with us that's their standards it wasn't a standard that you gave them up to 10% off is fine didn't provide that I'm wondering if it's if it's also a timing thing but I don't know the market was increasing it's been increasing for several years last year valued by April 1st 2021 so it might be a little bit of change from market appreciation over time but that said that's what they told you that's their standard so you didn't move forward but you have the opportunity now so I suggest you take advantage of that now even if my new assessment is based on a proper look at what happened in the last year it would be based on a bad starting point we'll look at it all fresh and new I can just point out here about pollution in this room somebody had this room it's a nice one so thank you all for coming and your dog will be available in the hall afterwards thanks Alan, great job thank you Alan