JANESVILLE — For Janesville homeowners who recently received a city notice that their assessed value has skyrocketed, the news may not be as worrisome as it appears.
The impact on an individual homeowner’s bottom line — on annual property tax bills that come out late in the fall — may not be as significant as the revaluation looks on paper, the city of Janesville assessor’s office says.
Janesville in 2022 entered the final year of a four-year valuation period, which means that under city policy, assessors now are applying updated assessed values that match current fair market conditions for all properties in the city — about 24,000 properties in all.
On average, City Assessor Michelle Laube said most residential taxpayers are seeing an increased valuation of around 44%.
Some residents may be surprised to see how much the city’s valuation of their property has jumped since the last reassessment in 2019.
But Laube said that generally, the closer a residential property’s new property valuation is to the city’s average 44% increase, the less likely its owner will see a significant hike to their tax bill as a result of this year’s revaluation.
Laube said a small number of properties with values that have appreciated at a greater clip —as high as 66% increases in some cases — might see tax increases on their next bill.
Laube said there is no direct correlation between property tax increases and jumps in assessments, as long as the owner’s property value increased at a rate that’s closest to the new local average for reassessments.
Laube said that’s because in a reassessment year, the amount residents pay in taxes — whether an increase or decrease compared to the prior year— is in direct proportion to the property’s overall value compared to all other properties being reassessed.
The city, in revealuating properties, does a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of private sector fair market, with the goal of reflecting the current market demand, average home price and current housing market in Janesville.
Laube said as occurred in the 2019 revaluation, assessors this year noticed that some housing prices have surged more in some neighborhoods than in others—including areas where a lower average home value is driving sales amid an ongoing housing shortage.
The city, county and local school districts will set their tax rates for the next budget year — and next property tax bills — late this fall.
Residents who wonder what they might pay under revaluation can get a general idea by plugging their old property valuation and their new one into city of Janesville’s online tax calculator, Laube said.
“It (the tax calculator) helps people in just get the impact of what we know today. We don’t know where the budgets are going for 2023. But we do know where we were in 2022,” Laube said.
The caveat: Those numbers only hold up if budgeted spending and tax rates don’t jump significantly among all local taxing entities. And the numbers don’t factor in increases to fees, utility increases, or increases for debt service by local taxing entities.
On average, tax rates tend to increase by about 3% year, Laube said.
City residents can call the assessor’s office to request an open book review of their property if they believe the city has made an error on their 2023 reassessment. The first city review is slated for Aug. 1.
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