QUESTION: Can a home that sold just a year before the county’s latest revaluation end up with a much higher tax value than the new owner handed over at closing? Is it possible for the home’s market value to have shot up steeply enough to justify the higher assessment?
ANSWER: The housing market in Alamance County has been unusually bullish since the county’s penultimate tax revaluation in 2017 – and that seems to go double for the final year before the tax office completed its most recent mass reassessment in January.
According to the county’s tax administrator Jeremy Akins, the local housing market is actually a composite of several “submarkets” that don’t always move in sync with each other.
“However, if I were to broadly summarize residential market activity in 2022,” he added in an interview with The Alamance News, “I would say that we increased perhaps 20 percent over the course of the year. So, if you bought your home for $200,000 in January 2022, I would anticipate that it would be worth $240,000 by January 2023. While specific time adjustments may vary, some adjustment for time will need to be made when comparing historical sales and appraisals to our effective date of January 1, 2023.”
THE PUBLIC ASKS: Have a question about a matter of public record? Call The Alamance News at (336) 228-7851; write to the newspaper at P.O. Box 431, Graham, NC 27253; or e-mail alamancenews@mail.com.
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