Wilkes County commissioners are postponing a revaluation scheduled for 2011 after hearing that real-estate sales have been so sluggish the county doesn't have enough data to make wide-scale appraisals.
The revaluation was rescheduled for 2013 to allow the real-estate market to stabilize and allow more data to be gathered on which to base the revaluation, officials said.
Wilkes County Tax Administrator Alex Hamilton told commissioners last week that his office has not been able to identify enough "arms-length" sales this year, meaning those transactions that were sales of one party to another, rather than deed transfers or gifts of property to relatives.
Overall, there have been about 1,700 deed transfers so far this year. But buyers who return voluntary questionnaires to the tax office have identified only about 120 of those sales as being arms-length transactions.
When the last revaluation was done, in 2007, the tax office had more than 1,000 such sales, he told commissioners.
"If we're going to lower or raise values, we've got to defend it," Hamilton said. "We don't have the data to make a determination one way or another. One-hundred-and-twenty sales is not a market."
Commissioner Gary Blevins said that property owners who see values go down should expect the revaluation to occur on schedule.
Hamilton said the problem is that even though there's a perception that values have gone down, there's not enough data to show that. Some values have gone up.
"The problem is there are not enough sales to prove it one way or another," he said.
Commissioner Charlie Sink, who is a real-estate appraiser, said that it is difficult now to find comparable sales required to do appraisals just for single sales. Finding the right values for a large number of properties would be that much harder, he said.
"Sales are not happening because people are not willing to take less than what they think their property is worth," Sink said.
North Carolina law requires that property valuations be done at least every 8 years.
Watauga County had been scheduled to have a revaluation next year, but commissioners voted in June to move it to 2012 because real-estate sales were so slow.
In 2001, Wilkes County adopted a 4-year appraisal cycle, in part, because when the county waited 8 years, taxpayers were sometimes shocked at how much their property values had increased. Other counties scheduled more frequent revaluations for the same reason.
Commissioners voted unanimously to postpone the revaluation to 2013.
mmitchell@wsjournal.com
667-5691
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