Assessor Lowers Values for 8,000 More Homes and Firms

About 8,000 more Ventura County homeowners and businesses have been notified that they will receive tax breaks following a fifth straight year of falling real estate values, officials said.

Since 1990, the county assessor’s office has lowered the taxable value of more than 62,000 properties, 28% of all of those in the county, Assessor Glenn Gray said.

Many more owners may deserve tax breaks, Gray said last week, as his office began mailing assessments for the fiscal year that began July 1. But employees in the assessor’s office are down one-third in three years because of budget cuts, and Gray said he does not have enough appraisers to do the work.

Indeed, property owners filed a record 8,681 appeals of the taxable values last fiscal year. That compares to 4,624 filed the year before and 732 five years ago.

“We should be assessing everyone, but we don’t have the manpower to do it every year,” Gray said. “We’re behind in our work, and there’s no reason to expect any fewer appeals than last year.”

Property owners have until Sept. 15 to submit appeals for this fiscal year. If the county does not resolve an appeal within two years, the property owner automatically receives the lower assessment.

The current backlog of appeals is about 6,000, Gray said.

Due to the heavy workload and smaller staff, the state Board of Equalization extended Ventura County’s deadline for filing its annual tax roll by one month to Aug. 1, Gray said. His office now has 96 workers, down 53 from 1991.

But Gray said he does not expect any further cuts during budget hearings that continue next week before the Board of Supervisors. And he may get a few more workers.

Citing the continued increase in assessment appeals, county chief administrator Lin Koester has requested funds for five new appraisers in his proposed budget and will recommend hiring an additional three appraisers and two office assistants, said budget analyst Clinton Tatum.

Hiring the five to 10 new employees would cost the county between $235,000 and $400,000 annually, he said. But if the appeals are not dealt with, the county automatically loses.

“The difference between the appraised values of the appealed properties and what the property owners feel they should be is between $10 million and $14 million,” Tatum said. “That’s revenue for the county.”

Economic analysts are split on whether home prices and property values will continue declining here, or stabilize.

Mark Schniepp, director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, predicts that Ventura County home prices and values will level off or even rise slightly this year. Lower interest rates and a slow recovery of the local economy are expected to lead to slight improvements in the housing market, he said.

The median selling price of a single-family home in Ventura County decreased 3.5% for the first five months of this year, Schniepp said.

“We think this decline will be wiped out by the end of the year,” he said. “In fact, we’re a little surprised now that it hasn’t been. Ventura County is actually one of the more mild areas of decline. The economy is improving better there than in other areas of Southern California.

“Summer season is the buying season, so it may provide a shot in the arm for the housing industry,” he said.

But Nima Nattagh, an economist with TRW REDI Property Data, said he expects prices to remain soft throughout the year.

“The rate of decline has slowed down, but there still is a decline,” Nattagh said.

TRW REDI reports that the average price of county homes sold for the first half of this year was $228,543, compared to $229,303 during the first six months of last year. Average values peaked at $261,600 in 1989.

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Property Taxes

Since 1992, the number of parcels granted lower values has more than doubled.

Tax year: Properties 1992-93: 26,000 1993-94: 49,000 1994-95: 54,000 1995-96: 62,000

Appeals of property assessments have increased 12-fold in Ventura County since 1989.

Year: Number of appeals

1989-90: 732 1990-91: 981 1991-92: 1,882 1992-93: 2,689 1993-94: 4,624 1994-95: 8,681

Source: Ventura County Assessor’s Office