If you've opened your letter from the Orleans assessor's office, you may have experienced a bit of sticker shock.
Property values are reassessed every four years, and this time they have gone up for many homeowners.
So, what you can do if you don't agree with your price?
It appears for now that the average increase could be 15 percent, but the assessor’s office will not know for sure until after the assessment rolls close in a month. People who will be 65 and older this year or who are permanently disabled and have an income of $100,000 or less will not have an increase in their assessment. However, you must apply for this waiver either online or in person by August 15.
Orleans Council Vice President Helena Moreno is hearing from upset taxpayers about their significant property value increases.
“Insurance costs are through the roof, people are struggling to keep their homes, utility costs are high. I mean, so, it's already so hard to live in New Orleans, but they get another whammy with now my property taxes are higher,” said Councilwoman Helena Moreno.
So, she sent a letter out Monday afternoon, asking for Assessor Erroll Williams to appear before the council's economic development committee next week, to explain how his office came to those numbers. She points to concerns from a 2019 Bureau of Governmental Research finding about methodology.
“They saw that there was a lot of sales chasing, you know. Just because somebody on the block sells their house for a heck of a lot of money, everybody's, everybody's assessments went up,” she added.
“Assessments are being made based upon averages of what properties are selling for each respective neighborhood, and if there are conditions inside the property that we are unaware of, because our view is not like an independent field appraiser. We're not going through every home, OK? It's from the street,” explained Orleans Assessor Erroll Williams.
For comparison, Assessor Williams says the city is divided into 393 neighborhoods for home assessment, and 141 sections for commercial property, not by zip code, since there is so much variance in prices.
Rather than wait until the deadline on August 15, he encourages people to come now to dispute increases while his office has no one in the waiting room, or file an online appeal between July 24-August 18. You can take pictures of your home's interior while holding a current newspaper showing that day's date. Around 123,000 letters with the new assessment are in the mail. There are maps of the many homes came in at more than a million dollars and those that now assess fir a half million to one million. More than 6,000 homes went up more than 50 percent. Even some small Central City homes in need of repair went up I value.
“Here's what happened. The people who are buying up these houses in the inner city, in the Mid-City areas, they are buying them and renovating them. Those affect the value of those neighborhoods,” said Williams.
“I do not think that the assessor has done a good job at getting this information out to the public, letting them know what is happening right now,” said Moreno.
In response, Assessor Williams says his office began an information campaign last year, sending multiple mailers to homeowners warning about possible increases due to changes in the real estate market.
This can get complicated, but an increase in property values could mean some people will pay higher taxes, some will pay the same and, others less, because the millage rate by law has to go down. Moreno says the council will not raise the millage. We don't know yet if the school board, S&WB, and other agencies will vote to raise them.