Property values ​​in Stowe double after revaluation

This story by Tommy Gardner was first published in the Stowe Reporter on June 20.

Do you have $1.5 million? That’s now officially the average assessed price for a home in Stowe, following the recent completion of a citywide reassessment of property values ​​that was two years in the making.

Stowe Town Assessor Tim Morrissey said that while these new values ​​- which will be released next week – may have appeared overnight, Stowe has not had a townwide reassessment since 2012 and a lot has happened in the real estate market since then.

“It has more than doubled in 12 years,” Morrissey said.

The reassessment was completed in April, but the numbers are still subject to change as the city prepares for a series of hearings where anyone who challenges the new property values ​​can file an appeal. But here’s what average residential property values ​​currently look like:

• Homes on six acres or less: $1.11 million

• Homes on more than six acres: $2.47 million

• All these houses together: $1.45 million

• Condos: $977,450

Stowe’s total value – the combined value of all taxable properties in the city – was already one of the highest in the state when it was assessed at over $2 billion. That figure is laughable compared to the new value of nearly $5.5 billion.

Morrissey said the new numbers will likely put Stowe on the third-highest overall list in the state, behind only Burlington and South Burlington. And those cities have eight and four times the population of Stowe, respectively.

Taxes will not double

Morrissey was assisted in conducting the two-year reassessment by his predecessor, Tom Vickery, and the city’s long-standing board of directors.

Morrissey and Vickery are keen to point out that while the figures are staggering, the increase in property tax will not be that drastic. Tax rates for local authorities and educational institutions will fall significantly based on the new master list.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be tax increases, however—that’s simply the nature of the current inflationary economic climate, coupled with lawmakers’ warnings of a nearly 14 percent nationwide increase in education taxes.

However, this means that a doubling of the property value does not result in a corresponding tax increase.

“Basically, the municipal tax rate will be cut in half,” Morrissey said. “So many different factors come into play with education tax rates.”

He added, however, that the town administrators and tax assessors have nothing to do with it. Setting tax rates is the job of someone else, Montpelier, not Main Street in Stowe.

“Our job is simply to value the properties,” Morrissey said.

Starting next week, when the reassessment values ​​are announced, the city will post the new master list of properties on its website and allow searches by name and location so owners can compare their values ​​with others.

Property owners can also determine the tax impact generally by comparing their local “assessed value” to the citywide average of 44.77 percent. A Board of Listers notice sent to all Stowe property owners next week describes the assessed value as similar to the citywide assessed value the state uses to determine education tax rates.

If a property’s percentage value is above that average, it will not be affected by the 2024 revaluation, the advertisers’ memo said.

“We want to give people an idea of ​​what the impact is, because if you just see the numbers, you don’t see the impact,” Vickery said. “Most people aren’t really going to be affected much by the reassessment.”

Justice and equality

Morrissey said the citywide reassessment, although mandated by the state, is a good thing for everyone. Real estate has always been a hot commodity in Stowe, but he said home prices skyrocketed starting in 2019, a trend that was only accelerated by the pandemic.

The problem was that homes assessed at a certain value were selling for double, triple, or more that assessed value, so the citywide reassessment simply puts things back into balance.

“We want to make sure everyone is treated fairly and justly,” Morrissey said.

Throughout the process, appraisers continually compared old property maps with recent home sales, neighborhood trends and the ever-evolving Multiple Listing Service, the massive online database that real estate agents use to provide data on properties for sale.

Over the past two years, appraisers and real estate agents have established “neighborhood codes” based on the observation that homes in certain parts of Stowe were selling for relatively higher prices than in other areas of the city.

“So if we tighten up neighborhood rules, there will be more equity and everyone will pay their fair share,” Morrissey said.

Vickery noted that this volatility in the market particularly affected Stowe’s robust condo market — of the 4,094 total taxable properties in town, 1,288 are condos. Although newer condos like the 48 units in the upscale Spruce Peak neighborhood sold for an average of $1.6 million, older ones like the condos in Village Green sold for $500,000 despite their assessed value being between $150,000 and $200,000.

This means that while the average price of a condo in Stowe is $977,000, this amount is skewed upwards by properties in the multimillion-dollar range, and bargains can still be found – at least at Stowe levels.

“When you look at affordability in this city, a lot of people can’t afford a single-family home with land, but a condo might be something they could afford,” Morrissey said.

Two-year process

The state ordered Stowe to conduct a citywide reassessment of its properties three years ago, giving the city a year to prepare for the work. The order came as Stowe’s general assessed value – the state’s measure of how the assessed value of a city’s properties compares to what the market says they’re worth – was becoming increasingly inaccurate.

It wasn’t a phenomenon unique to Stowe. In recent years, the state has required most towns to conduct such reassessments. Because there simply aren’t enough professional assessors to hire to do all of this work, a significant backlog has developed, and some towns are on waiting lists for several years.

Stowe was able to avoid this by doing the work in-house. That luxury is available when a current appraiser has been in office for two decades and works alongside his predecessor, who served Stowe for 50 years. In addition, the board has appraisers who, in at least one case, have more than half a century of experience with Stowe properties.

That familiarity can work both ways in many cases. According to Morrissey, of the 2,272 residential properties in the city, advertisers were able to walk into 932 and tour another 832 properties, in addition to interviewing the owners.

“Other revaluation companies only capture a much smaller percentage of homes,” Morrissey said.

The Stowe team had to settle for photographing only 20 percent of the homes because they were unable to reach the owners. Only 2 percent of residential property owners flatly refused to let advertisers see their property.

But even there, Morrissey had already visited many of them as part of previous city-wide reassessments in 2012 and in the late 1990s.

This time, the team hired some data collectors and an office assistant, but did not need to involve any evaluation experts.

“If an outside company had taken over this city, you would see a big difference in terms of equity value,” Vickery said. “We know the real estate.”