The following information contained in Mr. Boncoskey’s presentation may be of interest to our clients:  (1) Percent reductions in full cash value (“FCV”) between tax year 2010 and tax year 2011 by property type; (2) Historical annual sale counts by property type; and (3) Historical median sale prices per square foot by property type.

FCVs decreased for all property types from tax year 2010 to tax year 2011.  Commercial properties realized an average reduction in FCV of 24.48 %.  Vacant land realized an average reduction in FCV of 36.49 %. 

If you have not filed an administrative appeal for tax year 2011, you can still appeal the value of your property directly to tax court on or before December 15, 2010.

If you do not file an administrative appeal, you have until December 15, 2010, to file a 2011 appeal directly with the Arizona tax court.

The Maricopa County Assessor’s Office is working its way through the largest wave of property-valuation appeals in nearly two decades as real-estate values continue to decline and owners try to save money in the lagging economy.

Appeals have been growing for the past five years, but they have leaped by nearly 50 percent in the past two years alone.

Maricopa County Assessor Keith Russell said his office saw 13,251 appeals in 2007 for residential, commercial and vacant land. As property values began to fall, the number of appeals rose to 17,213 last year and to 19,801 this year. The biggest spike over those three years was for commercial appeals, followed by residential.

In 2005, when property prices were rising rapidly and assessments had not caught up to market values, total appeals were nearly half of what they are today.

The final deadline to appeal your property valuation this year is Dec. 15.

This year’s valuations were established in January and mailed to owners in February. But the taxes based on those valuations aren’t due to be paid until the fall of 2010, an 18-month lag that creates a disconnect between the value the county puts on a property and what an owner considers its value in today’s market.

Valuation notices indicate both a “full cash value” and a “limited property value,” the two categories by which various property taxes are determined. The full cash value, which is intended to closely resemble market value, can be appealed. If you don’t think you could have sold your home on Jan. 1 for the full cash value listed on the valuation, you may want to consider an appeal.

Over the past couple of decades, appeals have typically risen when the market declined, Russell said.

“When we don’t have as much money coming in, we all look at the bottom line, whether that’s insurance being paid for the car or property taxes,” he said.

Appeals hit record numbers during the late 1980s and into the 1990s when, Russell said, the Assessor’s Office was flooded with as many as 28,000 a year.

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We have known Bart for many years and are delighted that he has joined our firm.  We are confident that he will provide our clients with excellent legal representation.

Please review Bart’s “bio” for more information about his background and experience.

If you filed an administrative appeal with the County Assessor or the State or County Board of Equalization, then a different deadline will likely apply.

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding the appeal of your property’s value or classification for 2010 and what remedies might still be available.

Also note, under Arizona law, a postmark on your tax payment by the delinquency date is considered “receipt” by the treasurer, but because questions sometimes come-up, we recommend using certified mail if you use this option.

At the moment it is unclear just how the Assessor will apply his new policy, however, taxpayers with land currently classified as agricultural under the high density grazing policy will almost certainly see significant increases in the land’s full cash value for the 2011 tax year.

Click Here to read the announcement in PDF format.

The case is significant, because it reaffirms the law in Arizona that if the Assessor adopts a valuation methodology for an entire “class” of taxpayers (in this case, apartment complexes), but then applies that methodology in a systematic and intentional manner to only some of the members of that class, that conduct violates the Arizona Constitution’s guarantee of “uniformity” in the assessment of property taxes. The Court of Appeals followed the 2004 decision of The Supreme Court of Arizona in another case handled by MWM’s lawyers, Aileen Char Life Interest, et al. v. Maricopa County (also listed in our website). Even though both cases involved virtually identical conduct by the County Assessor for different tax years, the County persisted in its opposition to the Aida Renta taxpayers.

Although the County’s attorneys have indicated their intent to seek review of this Opinion by the Arizona Supreme Court, given the fact that the County itself conceded that the Aida Renta case is “analytically indistinguishable” from the Aileen Char case, it is difficult to imagine any reason why the Supreme Court would be inclined to review this case which relied so heavily on the 2004 Opinion in Aileen Char for its rationale and holding. Of course, the real tragedy in this case is the significant amount of time that the taxpayers have had to wait to get their refunds of the discriminatory taxes that the County imposed against them. As required by Arizona law, however, they will be entitled to recover interest on those overpayments at 10% per year, so the real victims will be the taxpayers in Maricopa County who will have to pay for the County’s refusal to resolve this case when the Aileen Char case was decided over five years ago.