With skyrocketing home prices, Lexington owners see big property tax increases

LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — House owners in Fayette County are getting how much the scorching housing sector is influencing their assets taxes.

Fayette County Assets Worth Administrator David O’Neill said his business assesses the values of about 25% of Fayette County houses each and every 12 months. That implies people today can usually assume a new valuation each individual four several years.

“The folks who have been reassessed this year for 2022, the very last time they had been reassessed was in 2018. In 2018, the median sale cost was $191,000. These days, it is $260,000. Which is a 36% enhance in that period of time,” O’Neill said.

That suggests people who are having their new assessments this year are viewing a huge boost. People who have been observing the marketplace are not surprised.

“We’ve been maintaining an eye on property values and, I imply, from what I’ve noticed, they have skyrocketed all throughout the county. It was not genuinely stunning. I was basically sort of happy it came in where it was at for the reason that, comparatively on a handful of other web pages like Zillow, it is declaring it’s worthy of a different 30 or 40 thousand,” mentioned Barry Berlin.

Berlin reported his household price experienced amplified by $30,000 due to the fact the past assessment. If you come to feel the worth is incorrect, there is a method to challenge it.

“You should feel no cost to phone our business office or e-mail the get in touch with information on your notice and speak to us about the assessment. You can also initiate a protest on a kind on the web that is very straightforward, doesn’t choose a whole lot of time to do. Another person from this office environment will attain back out to you,” O’Neill explained.

For persons like Barry Berlin, however, the extra taxes are a fantastic indicator that their financial commitment is heading in the ideal way.

“For me, it can be fantastic. I am not looking to market this residence whenever shortly, so naturally the additional worth goes up, the additional income is coming into my pocket. The monthly’s heading to go up a minimal bit, but in the very long run, I am glad to see the property worth steadily increasing in this location,” Berlin claimed.

Friday afternoon, the Lexington Herald-Leader noted there was a cluster of households downtown, together with previous Lexington Mayor Jim Gray’s, that hadn’t amplified in worth in many several years. O’Neill claimed the difficulty was introduced to his attention this week.

“I took a appear at it and I concur that they were being, in some cases, noticeably beneath-assessed, so we introduced those up to reasonable funds benefit for 2022. Mainly, the reason is, in 2020 we did not do much reassessing due to the fact we ended up headed into the full COVID shutdown and it just wasn’t the proper time to be shifting house values. A lot’s transpired in the last few of years and some of people values have gone up quite substantially in the 6 years since they had been beforehand reviewed,” O’Neill mentioned.

Grey explained to the Herald-Leader that he was content to pay back the taxes on the adjusted value.