(Washington, DC) The Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) will mail 2008 assessment notices this week to all real property owners in the District of Columbia. A total of 185,000 taxable and exempt real properties have been reassessed to reflect current market values. Property owners receiving new assessment notices will not be taxed on the new assessed value until March 2008.
“Proposed assessments of properties in the District, on average, will increase 14 percent over the previous year’s assessment,” said Sherryl Hobbs Newman, deputy chief financial officer for tax and revenue. “Of this amount, residential property represents an increase of 9.6 percent, which signals that the District’s real estate market has normalized, compared to the double-digit growth of recent years.”
The 2008 real property assessment notice contains not only the proposed assessed value for a property, but also the estimated taxable assessment and important information related to property tax relief programs such as the homestead benefit and the owner-occupied residential tax credit. Included on the notice is the assigned assessor’s contact information for taxpayers who wish to discuss their assessment.
OTR determined its new residential assessments by analyzing approximately 10,000 recent sales occurring within 128 neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods throughout the District. The proposed assessment increases are similar to those experienced by other jurisdictions in the Washington metropolitan area. For instance, Maryland’s statewide increase over last year’s assessments is 18.7 percent. St. Mary’s County’s average one-year price increase of 28.1 percent led the state, while Garrett County values grew the slowest, at 12.8 percent.
District property owners who believe their proposed 2008 assessment does not reflect the market value of their property are encouraged to file an appeal on or before April 2, 2007. The appeal process begins when a property owner submits an appeal application to OTR.