Star Tribune Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:39:50 GMT
Property-tax values plunge, raising alarms
Tax relief might be on the horizon, but homeowners can't bank on it. Local officials, meanwhile, are sweating over budgets. Housing values for property-tax purposes are tumbling across the Twin Cities area -- dramatically, in some cases. In Ramsey County, declines are being reported for median-value homes in every one of its communities, and in every one of St. Paul's 17 neighborhoods, according to assessment notices sent to owners of single-family homes this month. In Dakota County, assessor Bill Peterson said that he is witness to history: a drop in county residential value for the first time "in my 30 years here." ... On the commercial and industrial side, total values are up about 5 percent in Ramsey County and 6.4 percent in Anoka County, and that overall values are relatively stable in Washington County. At the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, Kaye Rakow, public policy director for its Minnesota chapter, said that she sees the slumping residential market and the commercial gains, and knows a tax shift is coming. "The taxing jurisdictions are not going to raise less money," she said recently. But Rakow offers no protest: "It's a market-driven result," she said of the impending shift. "We recognize it. That's just the way it is."
[[keywords: PropertyTax;Metro;]]
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