 Hi, I'm Realtor Sara Maro with Cell State Ace Realty. Today on Proper Tea Time, I speak with County of Boulder Appraisal Deputy Ken Beezer. Ken works as part of a Cessar Cindy Braddock senior leadership team, and he's worked for the state of Colorado for over 25 years. As a Coloradan with a wife and three kids, Ken holds a business administration degree from CSU. He's not just a wealth of property tax knowledge, but he's also a great teacher who trains real estate professionals, attorneys, and property owners in the valuation process. When he's done providing great service and crunch numbers for the day, Ken can be found hiking our gorgeous front range or coaching his son's flag football team for fun. It's that time of year on Proper Tea Time to talk property tax. Hi, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Awesome. Likewise. Let's jump right in. So what do you do, and how did you get to doing what you do, and why don't you tell us also what you enjoy most about that, which you do. Well, I'm the appraisal deputy with Boulder County Assessors Office, and actually I started in 1995 with the state of Colorado. And so it's been a long time coming up on 28 years now. And within that, I started as an appraisal property tax specialist, and this state department I started with actually oversees all 64 county assessors to make sure there's uniform and equalization with valuation. And so it's a lot of ins, shuns and shuns. But when you come back around to it, it really encompasses uniformity, equalization within each of the 64 county assessors. And right now, with my job, I'm looking at Boulder County specifically. And my job, I actually oversee three supervisors who oversee 36 staff members, our appraisers, and make sure we get the values correctly. And so that's the main thing, be correct, be as fair as we can be, and help out to make sure the tax is appropriately adjusted and specifically collected. So you're an assessor? I am the assessor's appraisal deputy. Appraisal deputy, excuse me. So what is the assessor's, you kind of tell us your responsibilities. You're not the assessor herself. Tell me what the assessor's responsibilities are specifically. The assessor's responsible for discovering, listing, classifying, and valuing property all throughout their jurisdiction. And so Cindy Braddock, our assessor in Boulder, her responsibilities entail throughout Boulder County, all the different cities, all the jurisdictions, make sure we capture all the property. So discovering, make sure all the property's captured. We have it in our system. And secondarily, then making sure it's listed appropriately so public information can be public. And then going on and saying, valuation-wise, let's get the appropriate value and the appropriate class. The classification leads right to valuation. And so we have to make sure all that's correct so that people are fairly assessed. And end result, they're fairly paying only their fair share. Class being type? Yeah. There's classes, huge classes, and there's substratifications of classes. And based upon the classification, there's a lot of factors to figure in. One is the assessment rate, which we'll get to. And there's other situations where basically the type of valuation and how it's done is dictated by the type of property it is, which is classed. And so like the top three we have, we have vacant land, we have residential, and we have commercial slash industrial. And so all three of those classes formulate the basis for real property valuation. And so we have to make sure that we have that class appropriately because then the assessment rate and the ultimate tax bill is impacted. Got it. Okay. So in that vein, could you tell us the difference between a property's market value, the actual value, a property's assessed value, the mill levy, and what that is, and how all four of those things sort of factor into this property tax equation that you do? Definitely. It's very confusing for a lot of people because there's so many parts to this equation. And so I like to start off with what everyone knows, the market value. What you see within any transaction, hopefully you have willing buyer, willing seller, both knowledgeable, acting in their own best interests, and they are meeting of the minds, meeting together to decide, well, what is this property worth? What am I willing to pay for it? What am I willing to accept for it? And saying, okay, well, this is agreeable. Once they do that in Fair Arms Lake Transaction, they're basically going to say, okay, well, this is the meeting of the minds, I'm willing to pay it, I'm willing to go and sell it for this amount, and that is a market transaction. So a market value is based upon those transactions and whenever they occur. So sales are always going on throughout the whole time. And so we track all the sales that take place. We have to go ahead and make sure that those represent the market at the time they take place. And then we go ahead and look deeper at it, and we qualify or verify or disqualify them. Only qualified sales make it. And those are the ones we really analyze to make sure we know the market. And when we're looking at deeper, so the market value is the basis, it happens all over the place, anytime a property sells. Now if you actually look deeper, the actual value is the assessor's value as of the assessment date. But we're looking at the condition of the property, how well it's been maintained and so forth, and the classification is dictated by the actual use, the legal use of the property as of January 1st assessment date. But so the actual value takes all this information and says January 1st, it's classified this way because it's used this way. It's actually going to be valued based on comparable of this classification of properties. And then we go back to June 30th, which is what we call the appraisal date. And we're going to go ahead and say, okay, well, property has it set, condition and use January 1st, 2023. And how is that going to actually, how much would have been worth and people will be willing to pay June 30th of 2020? And in this case, 2023 is assessed, goes all the way back to June 30th, 2022. And so the actual value is taking into consideration a specific date. They all took place all throughout. But we're going to say June 30th, 2022, how much would have people paid? And then we go into the assessed value. We said classification was a big part. Well, when you talk about the classification, it influences the types of approaches that you can use to value property. It also influences specifically what type of value and what comparables you're going to use to come up with the value. And so when we look at that, we really say, okay, if we classify it as residential, it's going to have a lower rate, assessment rate, which then leads to a lower end value and a lower tax bill. And so residential has a favorable tax rate. And so that's what we're looking at. A lot of people want residential versus non, because there's a favorable tax rate and it's about one-third non-residential property tax rate. So actual market value becomes assessed value, actual value, and then turns into assessed value when you multiply by the rate that's given by the legislature at the state based on the class of property. And then we move on and we say, okay, well, what else is there? So then the middle levy. The middle levy is based on budgets of local tax and entities. And so what you'll see a lot of times is you'll see school districts. They do a certain amount for their budget. You'll see fire departments, fire districts. You'll see library districts. All the great services that taxpayers receive have to pay for. So each of these entities have an ability to tax based on a budget that's allowable and actually approved and viewable open to the public when they set those budgets. And so that becomes the middle levy. So if you put together the market value helps determine the actual value, which then is utilized, that's what our office does. And then the state legislature sets an assessment rate based on the classification of property. And then you multiply by that and it becomes the assessed value. And then the one other part is the middle levy based on budgeting allowances and that becomes multiply by that and it's actually the tax bill. Gee. So yes, it's very complex and we have charts and that's the way we do it because otherwise it flusters many up a person. Well, you're a mathematician. Not trying to be, but yes, you have to almost slide in there whether you like it or not. Okay, you lost me a couple of times. You mentioned 2020. Did you mean to go back only one year to 2022? Because I heard you say 2020 and then we go back to 2022. Why would you go back three and one year? Well, just to clarify what we have is we have something called a data collection period. Okay. And so all sales that have taken place from July 1st of 2020, all the way through to the appraisal date, which is June 30th, 2022. Okay, so it's a three-year span. It's actually 24 months. Oh. The actual data collection period is, yeah. I'm good at math. It's June 1st, 2020, all the way to June 30th of 2022. With you. Yes, so it's 24 month data collection period. We do 24 months because we want to capture seasonality. So there's ups and downs in the market when we capture that. But then the assessment date, the January 1st of each of the years, we're going to actually look at use and we're going to look at the valuation. Yes. And so do that, we have to say, well, we can't magically come up with the value timely unless we use historical information. Got it, got it, got it. And so it gives us that little bit of six months to truly utilize the data to come up with an actual value. Understood. The other place I got a little lost was you said appraised value. And you said favorable. Yes. You mean a taxpayer who has a residential home is going to pay a little less than a taxpayer who has like a commercial property. Exactly. And that's a type of class you're talking about. Yes. OK. Got that. What really, this is kind of a follow up, what really is the difference between what you do and what an appraiser does? I've had an appraiser on my show just a few months ago. And a lot of what you're saying sounds like what she said. Yeah. Generally appraisers are what we call them fee appraisers. Fee appraisers? A fee appraiser. Because they're not working for governmental, they're working for a fee per appraisal. And when you have a fee appraiser, they're looking at a specific one property and they don't have an appraisal date that is set for all sales. It's based upon when the sale takes place. So if I were to be a fee appraiser and you wanted to sell your property today, I'd look at today's date. What would it be worth on the market today? And my comparable sales, three to six of them, standardly, would be pulled from the best sales closest to the sale date. And so I'd look at that with our office. We do mass appraisal. And mass appraisal means we look at all the sales that have occurred. We try to figure out what they would have been worth. Was it arms like transaction? Willing by, willing to sell, action on the best interest. And then if it was, we capture that information and we calculate it. We put them all together. We use mass appraisal modeling to come up with, is there a trend? Are values going up? Are values going down? Which helps us determine if there's a time trend that needs to be applied. So wherever they happen, a fee appraiser would say, that's fine, here it is, here it is. With us, we have to say, well, here it is, but what would have it been June 30th of 2022? I see, okay. That timeline actually helps my brain a little bit. So can you talk about the important, like we're doing this in a very time sensitive time in a timely manner. What are some really important dates that I as a homeowner love everything you said about market value? That's the only one I really feel like I know about. But the tax assessment thing, because it's so time sensitive and of course I'm paying attention to comps and my neighborhood and my market value, I need to dig deeper when I'm looking at the tax assessed value because it's not only based on timing, but what are some other dates? Summer, fall, winter that I as a residential homeowner need to keep in my mind. I think when you're talking about property taxation, I think first understanding where it actually, where we look at the use and classification and then looking back at what the data collection period is, a lot of people get very confused because they're looking open-eyed and they say, well, my property today, when I receive my tax notice, wouldn't be worth this much. A tax notice goes out on May 1st of every year and so they may say, oh, well, I just got this bill and there's no way it's worth that much right now. Well, it goes back in time and so historical. So you'd want to say, okay, as of May 1st, when my property had been worth an exchange as of June 30th of 2022. And so you're kind of going back with that. So that's a good day to know. June 30th, 2022 is the date, appraisal date, where if it had happened that time to sale, that should be close to what it would have been offered for and bought for. Okay, then when you go to the assessment date, January 1st of every year, you have to actually look at that and say, okay, well, what use and what classification should have been here and it's residential, hopefully, used for that purpose. And so you're looking at that for the fable rate. And so January 1st is another part. How was it used? What was the level of production? What was the status of my property as of that date? So if a transaction where you have a property in transaction, like we're having transition, I'd say, and you're actually having vacant land, have a building upon it. And so when you do that, it shifts to the classification. So you're like January 1st, what is it? And that helps us with our comparables. And so then the next date, I'd say, would be May 1st. That's where you get your notice of value. Notice of value, a lot of people forget about how, notice of value, how important that is. As soon as you look at that, you say, is that reasonable? And if not, you have an appeal period that starts. And if you disagree, what are the value is on there, the classification, the condition, you can appeal that to our office anytime between May 1st and this year is June 6th, or June 8th. Other years, it's usually all throughout the month of May. And when you timely appeal, you have the best information you can. You have to bring it to the table. You go ahead and sign off on the appeal form, talk to our staff, and we try to help you to understand the system and decide whether you want to pursue your appeal at that time, or if you'd prefer to go ahead and let the property value stand. And so gives you rights. The other part is if you do, in fact, file an appeal, our office looks at all those appeals and then they come back around and they say, okay, well, is that reasonable? Is it not reasonable? And then we come up with what we call a notice to determination. And mid-August 15th is when those go out, taxpayer disagrees, property owner disagrees, they go to the next appeal period. The next thing is the County Board of Equalization and then up the road up to a trier fact level. So there's all sorts of opportunities, very taxpayer friendly or property owner friendly. And so that's what I really think it's all about. And those are the main dates. And then if you miss it, there's an abatement. We'll talk about a little bit later. Yeah, okay, let's get into this because you just answered a bunch of questions for me about appeals. It sounds like there are some online tools for me to look up basically helping me identify my class and the historic stuff that I need to read up on. Then it's really just a matter of filing a form. I assume I download a form, it's an appeal form, I download it, I bring it to you along with what again? Actually, you get the notice of determination in the mail. That's May 1st. Yeah, by May 1st. And you take that documentation and you actually fill that out. Notice of determination. Sorry, it's the notice of value. Notice of value May 1st. This is how much we say your house is worth. Yes. And then you look at it and make sure your characteristics are correct. You decide whether you think it's appropriate or not. And then you file an appeal before June 8th this year. And as long as you've done that, you preserved your rights to go ahead and move further if you still disagree after our initial take on whether or not it should be adjusted. And what are some common reasons that owners appeal? Like why, does it fail? Does it work? Are they legitimately right? I mean, tell me about what happens and how often it actually like comes to fruition that they dropped your taxes. Well, typically what you have is you have people appeal because they believe the classification should be different. We're talking about the assessment rate difference and it's gonna lead to a lower rate potentially if you have it from vacant land to residential classification. Also, we don't always capture everything perfectly. And so sometimes there's a situation where you may have a condition change. Something's not maintained reasonably well or maybe our records are incorrect. Maybe you only have two bathrooms versus three. So anything that could potentially impact that type of determination, which can influence value is something they bring in. Some people just don't agree. It's just too high, our taxes are too high. Well, we can't actually respond to that because the tax, the world one part of the equation out of the main three. And we can only control that valuation portion, that classification portion and the market tells us what those are. And so anything beyond that has to go to the legislature potentially for assessment rate adjustments or they have to go to the tax and entities for budget adjustments to lower the taxes that have come to them. And so that's what you're talking about. Now, as far as appeals, it actually goes even further. You can appeal for any reason. All you have to do is sign that you appeal and you just agree and turn it in timely. That's not always gonna work very well on getting an adjustment because we want documentation support and reasoning to make sense and we evaluate those deeper. And then we, our praisers look at them. They're assigned specific locations, specific geographical regions and they hopefully know the market pretty well. And they make the determination and then you get a notice of determination and then you have an opportunity to go further if you still disagree. And that notice of determination, you said comes like July-ish? It's August 15th. By August 15th. By August 15th. And then you have until the end of August to appeal. Okay. So what happens if I miss, let's say I do have a bunch of good documentation but I miss June 8th. If you miss the actual deadline for appealing. Which this year, excuse me, is June 8th. It's gonna be end of May usually, whatever that is, but it's extended. But if you miss that date, there's something called an abatement process. And it means that I did not timely file. Therefore, I still wanna preserve my right. And so you can go back up to the current year, back to two years, if you have not filed an appeal and you can make a determination that you wanna file all three. And as long as you have not filed, then you can do that. We call it one by to the apple. I see, I see. Filed being you haven't appealed but you also haven't paid your property taxes either. We recommend you pay your property taxes. And the reason is because abatement is generally speaking, correction. But then you receive back, there is a, the treasurer can seize to strain and try to sell your property. If you are delayed too much on that. And so, it's best to. Got it, so pay it, appeal it, figure it out later in the summer. Yes, and abatements sometimes have a delayed process. They don't immediately come back to you. So pay it, preserve your rights, and then provide documentation as much as you can. Well, this has been incredibly helpful. You obviously have tons of experience and tons of patience with us tax payers. I like to ask my guests, like what are one or two things that you really wish us lay people, us property owners, us property tax payers knew about property taxes in general? Obviously all you hear all day long probably is this is too much, I'm not doing it. I can't back up why but I refuse. Like can you talk about what you would blanket statement to the world about their property taxes if you had a megaphone? I think the clear message that I like to send is that it's not a subjective thing against anyone. And a lot of people feel like they're narrowing and signaling me out because something happened, I made someone mad at me, some government official. So they're kind of narrowing it down. So don't take it personally. Yes, don't take it personally, it's not meant that way. We try to be as objective as possible and it's specifically set on the market. We don't make the market, we track and we make sure we verify and we follow. And it sets it. As a realtor, from your lips to God's ears, right? Yeah. Anything else that you would bestow upon us? Well, I would say also we're a government but our staff is really customer service friendly. We do in fact try to do the best we can. Our assessor sends us out to things like this where we want to get the message out. We want to let people know we're not hiding anything. It's not wizardry, it's not magic. You know it's. But I love magic. It can be fun but this is not it. It's not the place and we don't do it that way. We have logic web documentation. We have reasonableness and we're not stuck on anything. We're really open to give us the data you may know better than we do. Let's correct the records. Let's make this work out. You only need to pay your fair share for governmental services. So you're still humans. You want us to be your boots on the ground to help you where we can. And you're just trying to be fair. Exactly. And don't take it personal. Those are great tips for life. You have been so helpful Ken. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, I appreciate you having me. Likewise, that's the proper tea.