Cumberland County property tax values have risen an average of 64.7% since 2017, Tax Administrator Joe Utley told the Board of Commissioners.
Unless the county commissioners, the Fayetteville City Council and other town boards change their tax rates this summer when they pass their new budgets, property owners will pay significantly more in property taxes.
According to the Zillow real estate service, the average value of a home in Cumberland County is $217,492. If that home is in the Fayetteville city limit, the homeowner pays just under $3,000 in annual property taxes. If the city and county do not change their tax rates, the homeowner’s new property bill will be about $4,938 this year.
The new valuations take effect July 1.
Public expected to respond, and to appeal
“You’re going to get a lot of phone calls. All of us will,” Commissioner Marshall Faircloth said. “But until the tax rate is changed — hopefully lowered in our case — we won’t really know what the end result’s going to be.”
If history is a signal for the future, the county commissioners and city and town leaders are likely in June to reduce their property tax rates in light of the new values.
In 2009, when that year’s revaluation showed an increase in property values, the Cumberland County commissioners cut the county tax rate, The Fayetteville Observer reported then. In 2017’s revaluation, property values dropped and the commissioners increased the tax rate.
The county has more than 143,000 properties, Utley said.
But each property is different. Some tax appraisals went up more than others, and some may have gone down.
In the upcoming week, Cumberland County property owners will start learning how much their property values have changed. The county plans to begin on Friday mailing the notices of the new values.
Property owners can appeal their property’s new appraised value if they disagree with it.
“With the increase that we’re gonna see in our county, there are going to be quite a few appeals,” Utley said.
New tax appraisals required by law
State law requires counties to re-appraise all homes, businesses and other properties at least once every eight years, Utley said. The revaluation “is to ensure property values accurately reflect fair market value, and ensuring the property tax burden is spread equitably amongst all taxpayers,” he said.
“And contrary to popular myth,” Utley said, “revaluations are not conducted to raise revenue.”
When reviewing residential and commercial properties, he said, the appraisers reviewed real estate sales data, assessed how much income the properties could earn and what it would cost to build the property.
Some details of the new valuations:
• Residential values rose 86.2%. (In 2017, residential values fell 4.9%.)
• Commercial real estate values rose 27%. (In 2017, these rose 4%.)
• Single-family homes rose 84.2%, multifamily homes rose 167.1%, condominiums rose 121.2%, and residential vacant land rose 63%.
While residential properties grew quickly since the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial and industrial properties have seen less increase in value and less new construction, Utley said.
“With people staying home, some of the stores may be closed, people ordering more online — we just did not see the growth in the commercial that we saw in residential.”
The property value increases in the municipalities:
• Fayetteville, 61.1
• Hope Mills, 70.8%
• Spring Lake, 62.0%
• Stedman, 62.6%
• Wade, 74.8%
• Falcon, 57.7%
• Godwin, 107.0%
• Linden, 73.0%
• Eastover, 64.9%