Median home values slip in Lakewood, Assessor finds

JEFFERSON COUNTY – Coming soon to a mailbox near you: the County Assessor’s new determination of your home’s value.

Depending on where you live, the news is either good (actual value is up 11.6 percent in the Green Acres neighborhood) or not-so-good (value dropped 6.8 percent in the Lakewood Village area).

Overall, Lakewood single-family median home values are down just a bit, about 2.2 percent since the last valuation cycle in 2007.

Much of the prosperity found in some neighborhoods is due to new construction, and some of the decline in other neighborhoods can be pegged to foreclosures, Assessor Jim Everson said.

But the good-news, bad-news scenario is reversed when it comes to tax bills. The more the value increases, the more taxes you pay. Lower estimated value gets you a lower tax bill.

Probably.

“Mill levies are not expected to change significantly. I haven’t heard of a lot of ballot issues coming up, so most people will keep pretty much close to the same mill levy they have, I would think,” Everson said. “That mill levy is applies to the value, which is a little less. So your taxes should be a little less.”

Taxes are determined by multiplying the Assessor’s actual property value by the residential assessment rate, 7.96 percent this year. Multiplying that result by the mill levy of every tax district that serves the property sets the amount of your tax bill.

There are 593 tax districts in Jefferson County, including the school district, the county, cities, fire districts, metropolitan districts and park and recreation districts.

About 5 percent of Lakewood’s annual revenue comes from property taxes. For 2009, the city expects to collect about $8.4 million from property owners. That compares with sale and use tax revenues, projected at nearly $49.7 million, or 45 percent of the city’s income.

Lakewood’s 2009 budget is $97.9 million.

State law requires the value of real estate property be recalculated every two years. This cycle’s values are based primarily on real estate sales between June 30, 2006 – the end of the last cycle – and June 30, 2008.

Because the real estate market continues to drop in some areas of the city as foreclosures continue to unfold, the revaluation will not reflect the current market.

“After June 30, it  (the market) started to reflect more of the foreclosures,” Everson said. “From the time a property is really troubled financially until the time we see a sale we can recognize, it’s usually about nine months out,” he said. 

But the foreclosure-driven decline seems to be leveling off this spring, Everson said.

“Right now, I’m seeing things flatten out, but I’m not seeing things going up very much. My prediction is that by June 30, 2010, things will be sort of flattened out and we won’t see much change. It will have gone done and then gone back up a little bit.”

Single-family home median values dropped less in Lakewood than in Wheat Ridge, where they dropped 5.8 percent, or Arvada, when the median value dropped 6 percent, or the county, which recorded a 3.8 percent decline.