BCM asked for valuation rethink
Ratepayers want updated aerial photos to be used
THE Buffalo City Ratepayers and Residents Forum has asked council to re-look at the recently published valuations roll incorporating aerial photographs taken on behalf of the city last year, which will provide a more accurate base for judging home values.
The latest housing valuation roll, published in February, has drawn the ire of many East London residents who have seen the value of their homes inexplicably jump by hundreds of thousands of rands, almost doubling in some cases.
The rates residents pay to BCM are based on these valuations.
According to a notice on the BCM website https://bcmm.evaluations.co.
za/eServices/Index.aspx – the objection period, which opened on February 26, closes at noon on April 26.
The letter, signed by Christo Theart as secretary of the Buffalo City Ratepayers Forum, points to a number of issues, including use of outdated aerial photographs, lack of onthe-ground inspectors and a complaint that many residents were not informed of their new valuation.
“The ratepayers have serious concerns about the valuation roll ... currently open for inspection.
“The guidelines for the compilation of Municipal Valuations published by the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs requires that the rates policy is updated. The latest rates policy found on the municipal website is dated July 28 2014, although the Rates Act requires it to be reviewed annually.
“The same guidelines require that municipalities ensure that correct and accurate data for each and every property is obtained and must be verified by the valuer. However, a significant number of properties in the valuation roll are zero rated while some of those properties have been identified by our members as having been developed with a house. We have also found a mansion worth more than R10m valued at R79 000.
“The reasons for these omissions can be attributed to the following: aerial photographs of 2013 were used for the valuation roll although new aerial photographs were taken in 2017 and the images of these will be available soon; information on new building plans does not seem to have been taken into account; no land use survey is available [and] it would seem that no inspections of properties on the ground were done, as not one of our members have encountered an inspector.
“We therefore submit that the information used to calculate valuations is inaccurate and not capable of verification,” said Theart.
He listed the organisation’s concerns about the process undertaken to determine valuations saying: “At many offices, Gonubie and Beacon Bay in particular, objection forms were not readily available. At some offices, Gonubie in particular, all the Valuation Books were not available at all times, such as the Book on Complexes (Group Housing).
“A great number of ratepayers have yet to receive a letter indicating their valuation and informing them of their rights. Not one of our ratepay-
ers has encountered a valuation inspector.
“The house size, in square metres, is not available for properties indicated on the website as comparable properties used to determine the value of each house.
“Without this information it is not possible to compare your house with the houses indicated as comparable properties. Only the site size is given, that has no meaning to determine whether it is comparable or not.”
Theart requested that BCM submit the forum’s “concerns about the valuation roll to the council for their consideration” and for “council to apply for an extension of time to complete the valuation roll in order to allow the valuer to consider the new aerial photographs when it becomes available soon and to obtain and use the latest information on approved building plans”.
“We implore council to, in future, coordinate new aerial photographs with the completion of the valuation roll in order to break the cycle of using dated aerial photographs for completion of each valuation roll,” he said.
By the time of going to print BCM had still not answered questions sent to it by the Daily Dispatch on Friday morning.
Some of these questions included why a multimillion-rand mansion would only be valued at R79 000, why some properties with houses on them were zero-rated and why outdated aerial photographs were used on which to estimate the recent house valuations.