Property values in Augusta County are booming

DATABASE

Want to know your assessment value?

Search here.

CRAIGSVILLE – A flood washed away John Sours’ shed, but from the empty concrete slab foundation where the structure stood he can survey the property that assessors consider increasingly valuable.

There’s a home built in 1876, a wrenched, wobbling and impassable red bridge reaching across the creek (flooding claimed a previous bridge), and two more sheds.

Across the creek, if the 74-year-old heart attack survivor felt like leaping, is a chicken coop Sours has never used. It sits on the only plateau amid a tree-filled chunk of land that rises so suddenly from the creek that Sours used to climb by clinging to branches.

He’d sell all of this .88-acre plot on the spot, he said, for its newly assessed value: $58,200. That value, up 48 percent over four years, shocked the Craigsville man when reassessed values came by mail last month.

“Somebody done made a mistake somewhere,” Sours said. “I hadn’t improved it none and the damn creek’s done taken one of my buildings. ... Can’t do nothing with the land. You can’t hardly walk up it, much less raise the taxes on it.”

Property values in Augusta County increased by more than a fourth over the last reassessment, in 2005, setting off a countywide petition drive and spurring a Churchville lawyer to threaten a lawsuit if supervisors don’t roll back to 2005 values. Pastures Supervisor Tracy Pyles is reviewing assessment methods and Augusta County supervisors are expected to lower the tax rate, currently 58 cents per $100 of assessed value.

“A lot of people are mad out here,” said Sours, who signed the petition but did not appeal his assessments. “It’s ridiculous the way things are.”

“I don’t know of anybody that isn’t mad,” Victoria Morris said of property owners in Craigsville, a community of 1,000 people. Like other people in Craigsville who spoke with The News Virginian, Morris signed the petition being circulated by Francis Chester. “Everybody’s fussin’ about it.”

Average property values in Craigsville, among Augusta’s poorest areas, increased by almost a third over the last reassessment. That jump slightly outpaced the countywide residential values increase of 27.7 percent.

“I thought it went up an awful lot, especially way out there in the western part of the county,” said Milton Grady, who appealed a 166-percent increase on 31 acres designated as land use, meaning the property is zoned agricultural allowing eligible property owners to get tax breaks. “Land never brings much money in Craigsville. ... They told me the average increase was 38 percent. ... I thought, ‘Well, I’d settle for that.’ ”

Yet the petitioning and appeals haven’t shaken the confidence of Dave Hickey, president of Blue Ridge Mass Appraisal Company, who said county property sales through mid-February validate his company’s assessment. More than three-fourths of 48 sales sold at prices higher than the appraised value, Hickey said.

Sales volume in Augusta and Waynesboro declined sharply in January, a traditionally slow month, according to RealWaynesboro.com, a local real estate market Web site. Thirty-nine sales closed last month compared to 62 in the same month the previous year.

“We’ve fallen all over ourselves to get the information correct,” Hickey said. “People in Craigsville have this perception their values are being clocked on sales in Stuarts Draft. ... That isn’t the case.”

Hickey, who considers himself a “vocal” Augusta County resident, said appeals hearings decreased this year compared with 2005, when they ran six weeks. Blue Ridge will wrap up less than four weeks of appeals this week.

“I will guarantee [appraisers] attempted to get to every property,” said Hickey, who agreed that a case like Sours’ might merit an appeal. “They know more about their property than we ever could. That’s what the hearings are for.”

Appraisers spent 18 months visiting properties and tried to take terrain, flood plains, age and condition into consideration, Hickey said. But assessors are charged with evaluating asset worth, not ability to pay, he said.

Irene Sprouse, 83, worries her Social Security income won’t cover an increase on the home her husband built 50 years ago. The property, which covers a fifth of an acre, is up about 49 percent to $50,000. That, she said, is too much considering the only improvement was to replace a lawnmower shed that blew down.

“We’re pinching pennies now, and he’s [husband] also sick,” Sprouse said. “I can’t remember when we did anything to our house. It really needs a paint job.”

Other large acreage owners have taken issue with the assessment.

“They looked at maps and saw a lot of acres,” said David Showker Jr., 67, whose family land saw increases up to 593 percent.

“Some of that land is in what is considered to be a flood plain and you can’t do anything with it,” he said of a 2.4-acre slice bordering Craig Street that increased from $4,800 to $33,300. “I don’t think it’s an accurate number. I don’t see property anywhere out there selling for that kind of money. And if it did, it was back before we were in the financial situation that we’re in.”

Power lines cross other parcels in his 60-acre farm. Some parts are landlocked; others are hilly and wooded. Like many, Showker is in disbelief, but expects supervisors will lower the tax rate.

“It’s in the hands of the elected representatives,” he said.