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Many property owners expect their real estate taxes will go up because of Blair County’s first reassessment since 1958.
The real question is how much, said Joe Falger who owns five acres in Logan Township.
“We’d all like things to be priced the way they were years ago,” he said.
Falger and his son, Brook Gamber of Altoona, were among the 420 people who attended the county’s fifth informational reassessment meeting held Tuesday night at Altoona Area Junior High School.
It was the largest turnout so far, Commissioner Terry Tomassetti reported, with meetings held previously at Claysburg-Kimmel High School drawing 120, Williamsburg Community High School drawing 190, Central High School drawing 270 and Tyrone Area High School at 262.
The sixth session is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. tonight at the Hollidaysburg Area Junior High School auditorium and the last one is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Bellwood-Antis High School.
County commissioners scheduled the meetings in preparation for the upcoming distribution of new assessed property values. Notices are to be mailed to property owners on or before July 1, and if the reassessment project remains on schedule, the new assessed values will be used for calculating 2017’s real estate tax bills.
“I thought the session was helpful,” Gamber said as he and Falger prepared to leave the meeting. “(And the part about people paying 60 percent too much or 60 percent too little.) We obviously knew things weren’t right based on the 1958 numbers.”
Vice President Tim Barr of Evaluator Services & Technology, the company Blair County hired to conduct the reassessment, told the audience that a study of Blair County properties found a wide range of assessed values and real estate taxes being paid by the owners of properties purchased for a similar price.
If five people buy a $200,000 property, shouldn’t they all pay the same amount of real estate taxes, Barr asked the audience, drawing nods of agreement.
But the concern about paying more is showing up at every meeting, especially when Barr asks people if they think their taxes will go up and most raise their hands. Barr, in response, tells them that about a third will go up, a third will go down and a third will stay the same.
“A lot of things offered tonight were over my head,” an 87-year-old Pleasant Valley resident said as she left the meeting. “But one question that didn’t come up is that when we were assessed in 1958, we had two incomes in my household. Now there’s a lot of widows and widowers including me. Our properties are the same, but we don’t have the same income.”
Another city property owner spoke of plans to put a house up for sale and asked how the new assessed value will affect the selling price.
“If someone wants to buy your house, they’ll negotiate a price with you,” Barr said.
But they’ll be interested in real estate taxes too, Barr advised.
He used the example of a buyer interested in two houses selling for the same price. While those houses should have the same real estates taxes, an outdated assessment means property’s taxes are higher for one. So because of that, he said, the buyer gravitated to the property with the lower taxes and the other remained on the market.
“Fair taxes help promote real estate sales,” Barr said.
Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 946-7456.