State (or county?) law requires them to calculate the values as of Jan. 1, 2006. And last year there was a 4-6 month period of ridiculous prices, and then almost nothing sold at all. Prices have only started to come down in the past 6 months or so. I'm not saying the property appraisers are justified, but I sure hope they are prepared to come down on their appraisals next year, since it seems like we are headed in that direction. Perhaps they were betting that the market would stabilize, and not head further down? Either way, they should err on the side of the property owners, since clearly this is a market in flux and they have plenty of cash rolling in. Pushing the limits on the values just seems unfair.
Well if they are calculating the value as of Jan 1, 2006, they could have saved answering and returning about 2000 phone calls from the public, calling to question their taxes. A simple notation stating that would suffice.
I see the problem for next year being that there wont be enough sales in 2006 to get a real handle on market value. One other huge problem will be, that if the market values are dropped dramitcally, the millage will have to increase, and the County Commissioners are going to catch hell about truly "raising" taxes.