Property taxes go up for some or down or stayed same, it depends

By Charlotte Underwood

JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- “… It could be you or me in that office, the standard is the same, regardless of the elected official, regardless of what county it is, if the assessor does not “adjust values to 100 percent market value, then the state would step in and “correct it and reappraise it up to market value.” -Gabe Looney – Property Assessor Consultant for the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service (CTAS).

The state set the Certified Property Tax Rate earlier this year, bringing it down from $2.0659 to $1.2156. for the county and recommending the lower rate of .8687 for the City of LaFollette, down from $1.29.

WLAF reached out to Looney to better understand the property reappraisal process and the tax breakdown.

“There’s no fuzzy math,” but there are a “lot of factors to the equation.”, according to Looney. One of these factors that plays a large role in your bill going up or down or staying about the same is the county’s “cumulative average” as far as property value increases. The county’s residential property value increase cumulative average was around 84-percent.

“It all comes down to percentages and averages,” according to Looney, who explained that if your property assessment value falls in line with the overall residential cumulative average for the county, then your taxes will be about the same, if you fall in above the county’s average, then your taxes go up, and if you fall below the average with your new property assessment, then your taxes go down.

His office is seeing this same increase in neighboring counties as well and it is not just Campbell County that saw the jump in property values and property taxes, according to Looney.

“There are neighboring counties that have reappraised and counties that are reappraising right now that will increase in the ballpark of what Campbell County has seen,” Looney said.

Looney, who lives in another county and had his property reappraised in 2023 said his values jumped by 72 percent. Property value and property tax increases are trending across the state.

Looney said the areas that are showing larger tax increases could be hotspots” where the property values more than likely jumped to be above the county’s cumulative average increase. Areas in the county that this is most apparent is lake front properties and lake communities, according to Looney.

“Basically, not all properties are equal and there’s a lot that goes into the appraisal such as attractiveness, location, etc. And that plays a part in where your property falls in the county average as far as assessment increases go,” Looney said. He also said that local property assessors in each county were “bound by state law to correctly appraise property values, and the property assessor does not set the market value, nor does he set the tax rates. The property assessor reacts to market value; the market value is set by the buyers and sellers in the community.”

“If he doesn’t adjust values to 100 percent of market value, then the state would come in and do that for him, and it’s statistical in nature, it’s not just happenstance, there is an analysis that takes place, for  example, that 84 percent increase, that’s a statistical analysis and through that process they determine how much value increase has to take place in a given county based on the market data,” Looney said.

The state’s division of property assessment has oversight over the reappraisal process and ultimately if the county property assessor “does not meet the statistical standard of adjusting/equalizing value back to market at 100 percent, then the state board of equalization would not approve the reappraisal plan.”

Another huge factor in the increase jumping so much is that it isn’t just an increase from last year’s tax rate, but rather from the rate that was set five years ago, since Campbell County was on a five-year reappraisal plan. During the past five years, the county and the state have had an influx of out-of-state people immigrate to the area and drive the property values up.

…It’s a lot of out-of-state money that has come in, and they are paying top dollar. Tennessee is beautiful and they want to live here for all the same reasons we want to live here …Tennessee had such low conservative tax rates that there was a mass immigration, if you will, to our state which is what jumped the assessment rates and drove this whole thing. Tennessee still has some of the lowest, most conservative tax rates in the nation,” Looney said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-10/24/2024-6AM)