Fulton sending out revised tax notices Saturday

Fulton County on Saturday becomes the final major metro Atlanta county to lower taxable values because of the national real estate collapse when it mails nearly 107,000 revaluation notices.

Burt Manning, Fulton’s chief appraiser, said 90 percent of the notices will lower values on properties. The county plans to mail another 60,000 notices in about three weeks.

In all, about half the parcels in Fulton will see taxable values fall for 2009.

“What we are doing is abiding by the laws that say we can revalue properties upward and must take foreclosures into account when setting values,” Manning said. “We trust these numbers will accurately reflect the values as of Jan. 1.”

Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton and DeKalb have already mailed about 250,000 notices lowering values. The changes have school boards, counties and cities all struggling to make ends meet against falling tax revenues.

The values in Fulton will fall the most south of I-20 where Atlanta has seen neighborhoods overrun by foreclosures and bank-owned sales and through south Fulton where new development for years drove hefty value gains. New home sales have stalled and lot values collapsed due to the building slowdown.

Owners of about 29,000 parcels filed property tax returns, seeking an average 30 percent assessment cut, Manning said. The notices mailed Saturday will reject those values for about 10,000 parcels, the chief appraiser said. Still, he said about 8,000 parcels on which returns were filed will get lower values on Saturday, just not as low as owners had hoped.

Bob Proctor, a Sandy Springs lawyer who has filed numerous suits challenging Atlanta and Fulton over tax issues, said he expected Fulton to get flooded with appeals from property owners who feel they deserve lower assessments. Owners have 45 days to appeal from Saturday.

“I have very serious doubts whether the assessors will really reduce the values to where they were as of Jan. 1,” Proctor said. “There’s been a value diminution across the board. There are condominiums in Buckhead that have severely devalued. It not just the poor areas.”