An attorney for the state said Monday that one of Fulton County’s top property assessors is so inept at gauging values, his residential appraiser's license should be revoked in order to protect the public.
Board of Assessors member Donald Johnson, however, blames his own department for a series of inflated appraisals between 2005 and 2007. Appraisals must cite prices of nearby, similar properties, and Johnson contends that the assessors office was taking so long back then to make data available to the public that he missed sales that might have lessened his values.
"When I pulled the tax records," Johnson testified, explaining why he didn't include a lower sale in one of his appraisals, "it was not on there."
Johnson is one of hundreds of appraisers that the state Real Estate Commission and Appraisers Board has called to account in the wake of the housing market crash, but his case has led taxpayer advocates to raise more doubts about the county's ability to fairly set tax values.
He is one of five assessors appointed by the Fulton County Commission, charged with deciding fair market values to determine how much taxpayers get billed, then hearing appeals. The state's case has played out while the assessors office mailed about 331,000 assessment notices last month, launching the appeals period.
Inflated appraisals, though not criminal offenses, played into the real estate meltdown, opening the door to housing scams, leaving homeowners stuck with massive loans based on bogus home values and allowing sales that jacked up thousands of property assessments. Johnson's attorney said the complaint against him came from a bank, which is trying pass along blame for its own mistakes.
Two and a half days of testimony in the complex license revocation case came to a close Monday, and Johnson's fate both as an assessor's board member and a professional appraiser now lies with an administrative law judge.
Judge Ana Kennedy gave attorneys until June 26 to submit proposed written rulings and said she'll make her decision by July 25.
The state has accused Johnson, a self-employed appraiser, of incompetence, negligence and falsifying documents in his work for private clients. The appraisers board contends that he overvalued three quadruplexes on Hollywood Road and townhouse on Moreland Avenue, areas rife with mortgage fraud during the height of the housing bubble.
While the loss of his appraiser's license wouldn't prevent Johnson from serving on the Board of Assessors, he has promised the commissioner who appointed him, Bill Edwards, that he will step down if he’s found in any way at fault.
Johnson is accused of using selective sales -- many of them inflated -- to boost values. In one case, the state alleges, he set a quadruplex's value at $345,000, ignoring nearby sales of $162,500 and using data provided by the mortgage company and a closing attorney.
In his closing argument, state attorney Paul Nystrom zeroed in on the townhouse, which Johnson and his daughter valued at $240,000. They found a sale in the same subdivision for $179,000 but didn't use it as a comparable, noting that it was "below the market."
Nystrom said Johnson was "covering his tracks."
"I think he wanted to have something there so that if he was ever called out on it, he could say, ‘I referenced that'," the attorney said.
Johnson has maintained that many of the sales the state says he should have referenced weren't available yet on the Web. In a hearing last month, two assessors office workers testified that during those years, sales took months, sometimes years, to be keyed into the system, then months more before they showed up on the Internet.
Those problems have since been corrected, Johnson said.
"It's one thing to ask my client to read tea leaves," Lackland said after Monday's hearing. "It's another thing if the tea leaves aren't there."
As foreclosures continue, complaints against appraisers are still being lodged with the state, usually by lending institutions and homeowners, according to Deputy Real Estate Commissioner Craig Coffee.
After peaking last year, cases are beginning to taper off, statistics show.
The appraisers board revoked 44 licenses last fiscal year, down from 90 in 2010 -- a 10-year high. It issued 37 citations last year, down from 67 the previous year.
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