Property owners in the Boscobel area might be in for some sticker shock. Property values are increasing this year—by an average of 53 percent for residential real estate.

“That number may seem shocking at first, but if you’ve been paying attention to the market lately, it’s not,” according to Chris Plamann, who presented the information to Boscobel’s City Council at its September 6 meeting.

Plamann is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Accurate Appraisal, which last year conducted a “market update” to bring the city into compliance with state law.

Every year, Plamann told the council, the state determines a rough guideline of the average cost of property. Every municipality is required to compare what they think is the value of a property against this market rate. Basically, the idea is that your taxes need to be collected against a home value that’s roughly accurate.

“The market values have drastically changed over the last four years,” Plamann said, “which is dropping you very quickly out of compliance.”

The same is true in some surrounding communities. In Woodman, for instance, values are up by 49 percent.

What’s involved?

Plamann explained that the market update consisted of a team of assessors armed with cameras roaming the city and updating the data that Accurate uses to determine the value of each home.

“If there was a new shed on the property, we would add that to the sketch,” he explained. “Or if we had a property marked as good or very good condition, and we go to the property and it looks like its going to fall apart, we would change the condition information.”

From there, the information is compared to real estate transactions to determine the correct value of the house. State law requires that those transactions occur in the previous two years.

Given the ongoing housing shortage and the inflated prices of homes, it’s not surprising that we’re facing this surge in market value.

What about taxes?

If home values went up by 53 percent, does that mean taxes will go up that much, too?

Not at all—that’s a misconception of how the process works, according to Plamann.

The 53 percent represents an average across all the residential property in the city. So if you’re worried about taxes you’ll want to compare your increase to that average.

If your property value increased faster and higher than average, you’ll pay more tax on that value. Conversely, if your property value increased slower than the average rate, you’ll pay less.

Taxes, he explained, are determined after the city, the county, the school district, and the technical college all determine their annual budgets. The total cost of these budgets gets divided up between all the real estate in the municipality.

It’s simple math, as Plamann explained—if the total assessed value of a jurisdiction goes up, and the total budgets of all the taxing agencies stay the same, then the mill rate— the amount that determines what any individual pays on their taxes—will go down.And as a rule of thumb, the mill rate comes down at about the same percentage that the assessment goes up.

A pair of nuisances

The board discussed but did not take action on two items of interest springing from citizen complaints to alders and the Park Board: One item was trucks ignoring the “No Jake Brake” signs coming into the city. It was agreed that the police department should be alerted to the problem.

The other was the shaggy grass and weeds at Boscobel’s new boat landing. Mike Reynolds, City Engineer/Director of Public Works, told the council that the project was technically not complete, and mowing the grass is on the contractor punch list. Reynolds said the aim was to have the project complete by the end of this month.