Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate

The News Virginian has a nice article about assessment appeals.  In Waynesboro, land owners have seen value rollbacks as small as $100 and as high as $3 million.

I’ve been reassessed serveral times but each time, though I was unhappy, I thought the new value was fair, or maybe a little low. If you think the assessment is too high, contest it.  You don’t need a lawyer and there are no fees associated with doing so.  You have nothing to lose.  Richard Spurzem gained tens of thousands of dollars.

A real-estate developer from Charlottesville, Spurzem made headlines during the 2005 reassessment for convincing the appeals board to make a major slash to his shopping center’s valuation, arguing in part that the west-end site held little attraction for big-name commercial endeavors.

In Charlottesville, to appeal an assessment, you have 30 days from the date of the assessment mailing to appeal, by either calling or visiting the Real Estate Assessor’s Office in City Hall. You can then review the data used in computing the assessment and, if necessary, schedule an inspection of the property. “After this, should a dispute still exist, you may appeal to the Board of Equalization. The three-person board, appointed by the Circuit Court, is composed of City property owners. The board may affirm, reduce or raise the assessment, if in their opinion such adjustments are necessary to equalize the tax burden upon all citizens in the City. If you are dissatisfied with the Board’s decision, you may appeal to the Circuit Court. If you have assessment questions please call the City Assessor’s Office at 434-970-3136.”

According to Move.com Charlottesville is the #2 place to retire in the US.

Specific criteria used in making up the list of best places follow:

    * Population growth: We wanted positive growth since 1990.
    * Near major metropolitan area: within 100 miles.
    * Housing cost: below $350,000, with a few exceptions. We’re showing current median housing prices (asking prices) for single-family houses.
    * Cost of living: No more than 20 percent above the national average.
    * Economic health: current unemployment rate below 4 percent and job growth greater than 10 percent for the past five years.
    * College presence: one or more major and/or highly competitive college in the vicinity.
    * Recreation and arts and culture score in the top third for nearby major metropolitan areas.

 

I think Charlottesville is prohibitivly expensive for blue colar folks, but I guess it’s all relative.

UPDATE: The Real Charlottesville Blog had this on 4/12.  Sorry for the old news.

I enjoyed the overview of Cville Republicans and the real estate tax issue before the city council at the Charlottesville Tomorrow Weblog today.  They have a great picture of Albemarle County Republicans Chairman Keith Drake’s over-the-top SUV / traveling billboard.  I like Drake’s approach:  only increase your budget if you need to rather than start the budget process with pockets burning from a real-estate tax windfall.

The DailyProgress.com has an exhaustive article today on the places29 plan.  It gives a good overview of transportation and development in the Charlottesville area (though the article is long and unfocused so you need to be pretty interested to make it all the way through).  The Places29 website is detailed with lots of maps.  Judy Wiegand, a county employee in community development oversees the site and the plan (I think) and has really done a great job getting info out there and keeping it fresh.

The images of what the U.S. 29 corridor in northern Albemarle County could look like in the next 20 years show a different world.

Electric lines vanish. New roads appear, giving drivers a way to avoid 29. Some commuters simply avoid the hassle by riding the bus. Walking is encouraged, because residents work, shop and play in coordinated communities.

Places29 lays out that vision, one very different from how many picture Albemarle’s U.S. 29 corridor today, as an 11-mile stretch of construction and congestion connecting the U.S. 250 Bypass to the Greene County line. Planners, however, envision an emerging community where residents can walk up, down and across U.S. 29 to take advantage of coffee shops, stores and restaurants, and where home is somewhere nearby.

Laid out in a series of colorful maps, Places29 suggests how land could be used during the next 20 years and proposes a road network to cope with the growth that county officials say is inevitable. The plan, now in draft form, is to be considered by the Board of Supervisors late this year. Places29 proposes a specific vision, one the board will ultimately mold and then decide whether to embrace or discard.

Some say it’s a vision that provides for development residents do not want, a blueprint for employment and housing that will only attract unwanted newcomers. Other residents and business owners say that Places29 looks great, but ask: Who will pay for it?

The plan has supporters and detractors. What most agree on is that the vision of Albemarle’s future is something the county must get right.

A pipe dream?

In some cases, tomorrow is already here.

Places29 envisions the development and redevelopment that planners say is bound to occur during the next several decades. Much new development is already under way in northern Albemarle.

Dotting the sides of the U.S. 29 corridor, construction can be seen popping up everywhere, and more is on the way. The National Ground Intelligence Center is set to expand by adding jobs and facilities; North Pointe, a 900-unit housing development that also includes plans for significant commercial space, has been approved; and Hollymead Town Center, a huge, multi-parcel retail, housing and mixed-use development, continues to expand.

Bill West fears his neighborhood will be consumed by cement.

“We don’t want to be designated a development area,” said West, who lives near Shopper’s World, echoing the sentiments of many residents. “We want to be a residential area.”

Lee Catlin, county spokeswoman, says that Places29 seeks to provide the best of both. Residents should think of Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, she said, not just “high rises and concrete.” While Places29 envisions a retail corridor, the area would still be livable and offer a high quality of life, she said.

It’s a dream that won’t be realized with the Places29 plan, says Wendell Wood, a developer and large landowner in the area.

Wood says the county’s emphasis on “neighborhood centers,” as well as other land-use designations that include plans for smaller retail stores, is “instant bankruptcy.”

per the News Virginian (Move in and up), new apartments are opening this week in dfowntown Waynesboro above the history museum.  Waynesboro politicians have been trying for some time to revitalize the downtown district, and Lord knows it needs it (ever tried to go our for coffee or anything on a weeknight after 8?) A couple years ago, the city council passed a new ordinance allowing for residential apartments on floors 2 and up in the downtown commercial district.  The idea is to lure people downtown that was, establishing a base for businesses.  When the businesses can afford to open and stay open, more people will come down and the effect snowballs and amplifies.  Sounds great to me!

The museum project was overseen by the Redevelopment & Housing Authority, to get some apartments going.  So far, no new apartments have been made, but perhaps this will be the first of many.

This is outlined in the article well as follows:

Converting the often lesser-used second floors of downtown buildings is seen as another way of getting more feet on the street, an element critical to the district’s revitalization and encouraged by the city, which several years ago made second-floor housing a by-right property use for the otherwise commercial area.

New housing means new tenants whose presence downtown, it’s anticipated, will contribute to a livelier atmosphere and provide a built-in audience for neighborhood shops and restaurants.

Few building owners so far have latched onto the idea, but developers hope the museum project - a first for downtown - will inspire more to pursue it.

The Staunton News Leader had a Neat Article About Augusta County Property Values, detailing how the housing market in Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County has risen drastically due to pressure from the east.  The big selling point here seems to be price pressure from Charlottesville and Winchester, which makes Augusta County and its cities seem like an inexpensive alternative.

“Augusta has a significant amount of spillover growth, just on your side of Afton Mountain, from Charlottesville,” said Theodore Koebel, director of the Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech. “You have people commuting over the mountain and buying homes because, compared to the Charlottesville area, they may be seen as a bargain.”

Buyers priced out of Harrisonburg might be looking south for housing options, said Darryl Crawford, a planner who analyzed six years of sales data to compile the newest report. Sales in greater Harrisonburg dropped in 2005, but remained steady in greater Augusta.

“For somebody who works in Harrisonburg, they could easily live in north Staunton or Augusta County,” said real estate agent Diane Woodson, who markets her Staunton and Waynesboro houses to buyers in Harrisonburg and Charlottesville.

But the report also shows housing cost increases outpacing wage increases locally. When adjusted for inflation, home prices rose 50 percent, but wages actually dropped by $161 a year in Staunton and $1,998 a year in Waynesboro. 

… 

“I don’t think the city, or anybody else, is putting enough emphasis on affordable housing,” said Staunton City Councilwoman Rita Wilson. “The average person is being pushed out.”  Koebel said it is important not to read too much into the rising home prices for now. The Augusta market is still small enough that one new subdivision or a few expensive purchases could swing the statistics.

Per The Daily News Record, there is a really interesting zoning decision before the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors.  A company that owns Endless Caverns wishes to develop it into an RV park (the website already reads “Endless Caverns and RV Resort”) and is seeking a special use permit on the land zoned agricultural.  Near-by residents, as is their custom, oppose the plan.

The interesting bit is the news today that the Caverns owners hired a Private Investigator who claimed to be a professor and interviewed neighbors and the newspaper trying to find out who opposed the group.  Having that secret exposed isn’t going to win them much local goodwill.

The nearby residents are arguing (site & pdf overview) that there are environmental issues, traffic concerns, & neighborhood character concerns but their most promising angle is the zoning / land use one. “residents who oppose the expansion say they gave the county several documents supporting their claim that an RV resort is not a good use of land zoned general agriculture.”  That’s probably true.  Rockingham county has been really pushing development and incenting folks to bring in outside money, so depending on what the company intends, this may be unstoppable with the current board.

Stultz said she hopes to have a decision on the site plan by April 1. The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors will reconsider the special-use permit, which was tabled in December, whenever it’s ready, she said.

Per the Waynesboro News Virginian, some protected wetlands may be paved over to build some houses.  The county ruled against the developer (Countryside Investments) but they were given more time to come up with a better arguement.  Poor drainage and increased flooding are prime concerns for the project. In a shocking development, neighbors are opposed to the new construction.

A couple of facts I didn’t know:

• City officials cannot take the value of the wetlands themselves into consideration when evaluating development plans
• Permitting wetlands construction is a power left solely to state and federal authorities

So much for local control.

This is good stuff.  DailyProgress reports that the Albemarle County Republican Committee is seeking a substantial decrease in the county’s real estate tax rate, now 74 cents per $100 of assessed value.

The Republicans’ argument hinges on a Virginia law that requires localities to hold a public hearing if property assessments go up more than 1 percent. If localities do not hold the public hearing, the tax rate cannot be set higher than the rate that would account for the increase in assessments.

In this case, Albemarle County Republicans say the rate would fall to 58 cents per $100 of assessed value to account for the rise in assessments. That amount would give the county slightly more in real estate revenue than what it had last year - that’s the point of the law, proponents of the Republican’s view say.

Per the DailyProgress Charlottesville assessments are up big this year, hitting poor neighborhoods particularly hard.  Here’s a chart of the percent increases:

Charlottesville tax districts with the highest and lowest percentage increases in existing housing assessments:
Top 5
1. Fifeville - 32 percent
2. Venable - 27 percent
3. Willoughby - 24 percent
4. Forest Hills - 22 percent
5. (tie) 10th & Page - 20 percent
5. (tie) Ridge Street - 20 percent
Bottom 5
1. University-Maury Hills - 0 percent
2. (tie) Towles-Merryden-Ivy Terrace - 3 percent
2. (tie) Azalea Gardens-Green Valley - 3 percent
4. 28 Holmes & North Avenue Area - 6 percent
5. Little High St./E. Jefferson St. - 7 percent

From the article:

The assessments of houses in Fifeville jumped 32 percent this year, the highest rate of any tax district in the city, following a 24 percent jump the prior year. Values of homes in the Ridge Street area spiked by 20 percent, compared with 8 percent the year before.

The average increase of existing residential home assessments in the city was 16.2 percent, with the typical Charlottesville house now worth approximately $280,000, said Roosevelt Barbour Jr., the city’s assessor.

Driving the demand for houses in these communities is the old real estate mantra of location, location, location. Situated halfway between UVa and the Downtown Mall, Fifeville and 10th and Page now draw young couples like the Pearsons who are attracted by easy access to the city’s main commercial center without the necessity of owning a car. 

I’ve been involved in Central Virginia real estate for more than a decade and the best time to buy has always been “a couple years ago”.  In hindsight that means NOW.  I’ve been more bearish lately on Charlottesville, feeling like things are as high as they can sustainably be right now.  The Staunton and Waynesboro markets seem to have more runway, in my opinion.  I’m not ready to say that a single family home in Charlottesville is a bad investment, but for investment property, I think greener fields lie elsewhere.

There does seem to be an oversupply of townhomes in Charlottesville, but those prices aren’t coming down like they are in other parts of the country.  I think the developers of the condos and the apartments-converted-into-condos in Cville are sufficiently diversified in the cash-cow that has been the Charlottesville real estate economy, that they’re neither willing nor needing to sell at bargain prices to cut their losses.  They’d just as soon double down.  The real opportunity in Charlottesville seems to be for people wanting to rent those condos.  When there’s oversupply in housing, even if the owners won’t sell at a loss, they still would rather lose money with low rent than eat the entire mortgage.  Empty apartments are expensive.