Is my Virginia Beach real estate assessment the same thing as market value?
The short answer is “no.” But it should be in the ball park. The City of Virginia Beach Real Estate Assessors Office does its best to assign a value to every property for tax purposes.
The current tax rate is $0.89 for every $100 of assessed value in Virginia Beach
However, market value can vary widely from your tax assessment. Every year at around tax season, I get phone calls from confused homeowners with questions about the tax assessment. About half of them are frustrated that the tax assessment is too high. This is the group that is planning to stay in their homes for awhile. The other half are frustrated that their tax assessment is too low. This is the group who plans to sell soon and thinks that the tax assessment is an appraisal.
Last week I got a call from a client who is selling her home. The tax assessment came in at $348,000 and we have the house listed at $350,000. After a bit of research I came up with the following data. There were 5 comparable houses that had sold within the previous 4 months that had tax assessments of about $350,000. They sold for…
$359,000
$330,000
$309,000
$290,000
That is a pretty wide spread for nearly identical assessments, wouldn’t you agree? To make things even more confusing, the homes in some neighborhoods routinely sell for more than the tax assessment while the homes in other neighborhoods routinely sell for less than the tax assessment. What is a confused homeowner to do?
So don’t think about the tax assessment as market value because it is not. It is simply a tool used by the city to distribute the property taxes fairly. If you want an accurate measure of market value I can give that to you by doing a CMA (comparable market analysis). By finding homes similar to yours in size, condition, and neighborhood, I can find a fairly narrow price range in which your home is likely to sell.
And I’ll do it for free! You can also get an appraisal, but that will cost you about $300. Appraisals are required by lenders for new home purchases and refinancing, but are no better or worse than a good CMA.
Every time I put a house on the market I do a detailed CMA to give the homeowner a current and realistic estimate of market value. Would you like one? Just fill in the form below and I’ll get back to you with a list of comparable properties complete with interior pictures.
