Valuation protests completed (complete article from source)
Source: York News-Times, by Melanie Wilkinson
August 02, 2007
YORK -- Unless some of the protesters want to take their case to the Tax Equalization Review Commission of the state, their valuations have been set for the year.
With August comes the end of valuation protest hearings. The county commissioners (acting as the board of equalization) and Assessor Ann Charlton heard a total of 63 protests this year, according to Cynthia Heine, county clerk.
Last year, owners protested valuations on 68 separate properties.
There was some substantial growth for certain properties over the past year, due to market trends, changes of use, etc. And in some instances, property owners believed a misunderstanding or lack of information skewed their valuation increases.
In a vast majority of properties that saw increases, the values were deemed as valid. What's to blame? Valuations across the state have increased -- and so have the number of high dollar land sales in York County and throughout southeast Nebraska. Some land, according to Assessor Charlton, has sold for nearly $5,000 an acre during the past two years. And at least two pieces of property near the interchange, just a little over an acre in size, sold for more than $1 million apiece.
Some property in the rural area of the county has sold for big dollars as well -- Charlton said that in the last 1 1/2 years, at least one half-section of land (320 acres) sold for more than $1 million.
"Because someone is willing to purchase at that price, and someone is willing to sell it at that price, it goes in the sale file as a 'comparable sale,'" Charlton explained, in an earlier interview. "So it affects the valuations across the board and there's nothing we can do."
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