Valuation deadline looming
If you are a property owner in Ndlambe, the deadline for objecting against the valuation assigned to your property is tomorrow (Friday), so if you are unhappy and have not formally objected, time is fast running out.
As the Port Alfred Residents and Ratepayers Association (Parra) informed readers in Talk of the Town a month ago, the general valuation of properties in Ndlambe was completed some time ago and the roll was made available for inspection and objection.
Each municipal account holder should also have received a notice of their new valuation with their March municipal account.
Parra chairman Dawie van Wyk said he was satisfied that valuations had been performed using recognised valuation methods with the comparative sales method being used predominantly where possible. This would have included all residential properties and vacant land.
Many attributes are used to compare the various properties to each other, including land size, size and condition of improvements, location, view, street appeal.
Obviously not all properties were inspected, but apparently a comprehensive set of street view photographs were taken by the valuers. These together with aerial photographs and municipal data were used to generate values for each property.
Commercial properties are valued by capitalising the expected incomes based on information provided to the valuers by various owners and property managers. These incomes were capitalised using the yield expected by investors.
Talk of the Town became aware of irregularities in valuations in some areas. One resident told TotT that some property values in Francolin Road had gone up by 27% while prime beachfront properties in West Beach Drive had gone down in value by 20%.
She rightly pointed out this was a huge discrepancy and appeared to be irrespective of the size of house/erf or number of bathrooms or sea views or beachfront access. Values appeared to be assigned willy-nilly for entire streets and areas. But not all houses in these areas are of the same worth and size.
Van Wyk said that in the Ndlambe Ratepayers Forum’s discussions with the valuation service provider and Ndlambe municipal officials, they acknowledged some calculation errors in the West Beach Drive, Greenmantle Drive and Francolin Road areas and that these were being addressed by the valuators and the municipality.
But this week, the municipality reverted to the refrain that “all unhappy consumers must object against a valuation they are in disagreement with”.
Van Wyk warned that “the mistake was made by the valuators and thus they/the municipality must inform all those who have incorrect values and how the values are going to be corrected.
“The municipality is opening itself up for litigation as they have knowingly accepted incorrectly calculated values.”