Atlanta property taxes: Fulton appraises well, but still fine-tuning

By Johnny Edwards

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Given the historic beating the housing market has taken, Doug Chans figured there was no way his house in Johns Creek could still be worth what it was in 2007. His county-appraised value of $308,700, and his tax bill of more than $3,700, had to be too high.

Proving it took 30 hours of research, two rejections by the Fulton County assessors' office, a trip downtown for a Board of Equalization hearing, about $45 for copies and parking fees and a visit from county appraisers to measure his square footage.

“If I knew all the work that was involved in this, I wouldn’t have bothered," Chans said earlier this month. "It's just the principle of the matter, at this point.”

He turned out to be right, and based on a sweeping analysis of five counties' appraised values and actual market sales by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he's among tens of thousands of taxpayers who are overpaying. The AJC found that, where they reappraised residential property in 2010, three core metro counties -- DeKalb, Clayton and Gwinnett -- tended to set tax values that were higher than property was actually worth.

But Fulton tax appraisers, on the whole, did a relatively good job of hitting a rapidly moving target: The typical residential appraisal in Georgia's biggest county was about 2.6 percent less than the home's actual value, the newspaper found. The county is steadily catching up with the Great Recession's real estate bust, thanks to legislation forbidding increases and requiring that county appraisers take foreclosures into account in their calculations.

Even so, the tax rolls are still littered with homeowners who are paying too much, as with Doug Chans.

Stan Anderson, president of Anderson Real Estate Services and a consultant for the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, summed up the problem: The overall sales-to-assessment ratio may look good, but individual values might not.

"If you're one of those assessed at 115 percent, you're going to be raising hell," said Anderson, a former Fulton appraiser. "But if you're one of those at 85 percent, you're going to be quiet. But look at the range. In the middle, they're fine."

There are indications of that in the AJC's ZIP code breakdown. For example, in 30326, an area of Buckhead that includes Lenox Square, the typical reappraisal came in 14.5 percent higher than what homes are selling for. In 30314, on the west side of Atlanta near Atlanta University Center, they're typically 28.4 percent low.

Fulton Chief Appraiser Burt Manning acknowledged that many areas of the county probably need to be revalued next year, but he pointed out that most overvalues and undervalues found by the AJC were by only a few percentage points, well within the state Department of Revenue's standard of no more than 10 percent over or under.

"In mass appraisal, there's always room for improvement," he said.

Questioning authority

Given the market slump and lower values on some of his neighbors’ homes in Johns Creek's Devonhall subdivision, Chans thought his appraisal needed to drop to at least $280,000, which would save him about $385 on his bill.

"Times are tough," Chans said. "That's [money] to spend on your kids, or buying Christmas presents, or to do whatever you want."

He started with a property tax return -- a document filed by property owners challenging the county's valuation -- placing his value at $270,000. But Chans' value stayed the same.

Next he filed an appeal, asking for a reduction to $283,000. The Board of Assessors turned him down.

He went on to the next tier in the appeals process, the Board of Equalization. Fulton has 10 three-member boards made up of residents selected out of the jury pool, screened by the grand jury and trained by the state Revenue department.

Earlier this month, Chans sat in a small room with a window overlooking the government center atrium, the board members on the other side of a fold-out table, Senior Property Appraiser Cheryl Smalls seated next to him.

He felt badly outgunned, he said. Smalls ran through a sales analysis of comparable properties in his neighborhood, some lower, some higher than $308,700. She recommended no change in value.

Chans, armed with a folder of his own, cited houses in his immediate vicinity with values of less than $300,000, but much fancier than his.

"These are the people I have coffee with, dinner with," he told the board. "I've been in their homes, and I know what the sizes are."

He finally got the board's attention when he told them there's no way his house has 3,616 square feet when the one next door, with the same floor plan, has 3,166, as Fulton tax records show. He knows that house well. He used to own it, and his ex-wife lives there now, making it easy for her and her husband and him and his wife to co-parent their three daughters. County appraisers may be failing to account for his den's vaulted ceiling, he said.

The board ordered a field check of his house, and Smalls and her supervisor took measurements 10 days later.

Value vindication

On Wednesday, Chief Deputy Appraiser Doug Kirkpatrick told the AJC that the measurements totaled 2,616, about what Chans suspected. At his next Board of Equalization hearing, the assessors' office staff will recommend lowering his 2010 assessment to $261,000, which should save Chans about $640.

"It feels good at last to be vindicated," Chans said, "to get a fair and equitable result, to use their terminology."

For the most part, the AJC's analysis found, the county was equitable in Chans' part of the county last year, the smoldering taxpayer revolt there notwithstanding. His 30097 ZIP code had a median appraisal decrease of 8.3 percent last year and, compared to actual sales, the typical home was appraised 2 percent too low.

The AJC's analysis found Fulton overappraised in 13 of its 44 ZIP codes -- only two of them in north Fulton. One was Sandy Springs' 30328, which was 0.1 percent high, and the other was 30342, split between Sandy Springs and north Atlanta and 2.9 percent over.

At the southern end of the county, assessments came in 5.2 percent too high in 30213 and 7.6 percent too high in 30268.

The greatest disparities were in Atlanta. Along with being 14.5 percent over in the Lenox Square area, the county was 13.3 percent too high in 30303, in downtown Atlanta in the area of Georgia State University.

Manning said those could be attributable to condominiums, whose values have fallen drastically. The appraiser's office doesn't gather data by ZIP code but rather by about 2,000 neighborhoods, and if his own analysis finds similar overstatements next year, appraisals will be lowered, he said.

"As far as I can tell, what your study is showing is that we did a doggone near perfect job in Fulton County," Manning said.

He'll get no thanks from Ron Geraneo, who spent two years fighting the county over the value of his house on Roxboro Cove in Buckhead's Pine Hills subdivision.Geraneo lives in 30324, where the typical assessment was 5.9 percent over market, and he's preparing to do battle again.

In 2003 he bought the house for $490,000; in 2005 the county valued it at $535,000. He argued then that appraisers were unfairly using houses zoned for a better elementary school in their sales comparisons, and when both the Board of Assessors and the Board of Equalization dismissed him, he took his case to Superior Court.

After a meeting in Judge Jerry Baxter's chambers, he and the assessors' attorney agreed to $465,000, where his value has remained ever since. Then, earlier this year, Geraneo was rejected for refinancing because the bank appraised the house at $435,000. He"ll be appealing again.

"They expect you to not want to pay out of pocket and just go away, but I'm not one of those guys," he said. "I want them to stop doing this. I want big government to stop being stupid."

Stuck in Buckhead

Another 30324 resident, Robin Michael, would go away if she could. While many in Fulton's most affluent neighborhoods lament that their values aren't falling with the market, those at the mercy of the market feel another sort of pain.

When her husband took an information technology job in Jacksonville, Michael said she worried that their second-floor unit in Plantation at Lenox would sell too fast, not giving her enough time to find a new job of her own. She stayed behind while her husband went on to an apartment in Florida.

That was a year and a half ago. Since then, the condo has gotten about a half-dozen nibbles and zero offers.

“We even put it on Craigslist,” Michael said. “Isn’t that sad?”

Michael can’t understand it. The condo is close to I-85, I-75, Ga. 400 and MARTA lines. They invested $30,000 in remodeling, then slashed their asking price by about that much, down to $149,900.

Meanwhile, she and her husband pour their paychecks into rent payments, mortgage payments and taxes. As their asking price has come down, so has the county's assessed value. The condo was appraised at $170,400 in 2008, $157,100 in 2009 and $148,400 this year.

They may need to slash lower. A unit  sold next door for $145,000 last month.

Michael doesn't want to move to Florida until she lines up a job, an effort which isn't going much better. She's reaching a breaking point.

“Because I miss him,” she said. “It’s terrible to say that, because I’m an adult and I should be able to handle this, but it’s just time.”

AJC database specialist John Perry contributed to this article.