Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate

Charlottesville Assessments Contionue to Increase Faster than Property Values, narrowing the gap between the market value and the taxed value. 

After decades of nominal assessment increases, the City of Charlottesville continues its trend started in the late 90’s of making assessments closer to fair market.  It used to be your assessment stayed pretty steady near the price you paid for it, until you chose to sell.  One landlord told me:

“I bought my first house in Charlottesville for $130K in 2001.  It was then assessed at $60,000.  Todays that assessment is over $220,000.  That’s a 300% growth in taxed value in six years!”.  Per the Daily Progress article today:

Charlottesville’s assessed property values increased by an average of 14.3 percent during 2006, a slight drop compared with the previous year’s assessments, according to a Tuesday press release from the city.

In 2005, the assessed property values rose by an average of 15.9 percent.

The article in the Cav Daily discusses the new millionaires who owned property along Brandon ave.  Those prices are making the University’s trade with Woddard Properties for all the Brandon Ave apartments, which seemed ridiculous to me at the time (that huge parking lot on the coner and $5 or 6 million for a hodge podge of Brandon Ave. properties) more reasonable.

The University needs to pull out the eminent domain card just once to keep from getting gouged.  They forked over millions this month to save face with the community. 

There was a great article in Fast Company Magazine about Music Today, and its founder Coran Capshaw (the man who is slowly acquiring and developing all of Charlottesville and the valley).  The article is fascinating.  it’s disappointing that Music Today has been mostly acquired by heavyweight Live Nation (have the headquarters here insures white collar jobs in addition to the blue collar, not to mention the benefit of donations to the arts and other charities.  Anyhow, the article is a nice inside look at how things work at the company.

Welcome to my new weblog about real estate in central Virginia.  I’ve been the renter, the buyer, the seller and the landlord at several properties since coming to Charlottesville in 1995.  I try to keep a pretty close eye on what’s happening in the real estate market there.  I am excited about the prospect of keeping tabs on that here in this blog.  If you have any questions or comments or anything please use the comment form and let me know.  Thanks and happy trails!