Higher valuations bring complaints
Largest increases found in homes located in suburbs south of Dayton.
A majority of the complaints to the Montgomery County Auditor’s Office about new preliminary tax appraisals for residential property is coming from southern suburban communities.
Higher valuations — the biggest gains since 2005 — were greatest south of Dayton, said Auditor Karl Keith.
“It’s fair to say most of the reviews we did involved property owners from the southern suburbs,” Keith said. “That’s understandable. Those were the places where we saw the largest increases.”
Almost 3,000 homeowners have asked appraisers with the auditor’s office to take a second look at preliminary tax values.
The triennial review showed those values climb countywide 6.3 percent — with 56 percent of all gains coming from Centerville, Kettering, Oakwood and Washington Twp.
But nowhere in the did property values climb higher in the county than in Miamisburg’s Brandon
hall Village neighborhood, where Robert Condron lives.
Values in the 206-parcel division jumped 28.5 percent, leading the 75-year-old retired mechanical engineer to exclaim “whoa” when opening an envelope from
the auditor with a new value of the home he’s owned for 19 years up $43,000 from three years ago to $184,000.
Quick home sales at higher prices in the predominantly 55-and-older neighborhood likely contributed to the swift rise in values, Condron said.
“I know the houses in here aren’t for sale very long,” he said. “There are a lot of them that get sold before they even go to a Realtor.”
Condron hasn’t challenged the valuation, but he’s also not entirely pleased about a potentially higher property tax bill.
“I feel like everybody has to pay their fair share if you want to get anything done,” he said. “But I would also just like to pay the fair share. I feel like they put the squeeze on us a little bit.”
Including commercial properties, Kettering’s total market gain of more than $235 million was the county’s highest, followed by Washington Twp. ($203.7 million), Oakwood ($114 million) and Centerville ($109.3 million).
More than 60 percent of county residential properties are valued higher than three years ago. About 10,000 asked for reviews in 2014, which was a full revaluation year when values decreased on 70 percent of county homes.
While a series of informal meetings has concluded, property owners with questions about their valuations may still take part in the informal review process through Sept. 29 by calling the auditor’s office at 937-2255096 or visiting http://www. mcauditor.org/informals.
About half of the 6,000 calls made so far this year to the hotline were resolved without a review meeting, Keith said.
It’s uncertain whether the auditor’s office will reexamine residential values in Brandonhall Village, but Keith said the preliminary values within certain county subdivisions are likely to be revisited, including areas within Yankee Trace and other Centerville neighborhoods.
“Where we have a lot of people coming in and bringing up a lot of issues, it may require us to go back and take another look at the entire neighborhood,” he said. “There are some that we have identified already ... We will be making some adjustments.”
Notices of final values will go out to residential property owners in December. Homeowners can appeal final values from January through March by filing a complaint with the county’s Board of Revision.
Like many living in Brandonhall Village’s tidy, onestory brick homes, Phyllis Heitz, 78, is living on a fixed income.
“I suppose for my kids when I leave this earthly realm, it will be good for them for resale,” said the retired Miamisburg schoolteacher. “But it’s bad because it will affect taxes while I’m around and what I’m able to pay.”