Benton County Homeowners to Receive a Break on Property Taxes—Yeah!

Benton County will be lowering values on residential properties by 2% - 6%. The percentages vary by area. Northeast Benton County will decrease by 6%, the southwest portion of the county will decrease by 2%, and other areas will be between those two figures.

When homeowners received their property assessments in 2008 there were thousands of unhappy people. By law, those values were based on 2005-2007 sales when prices were rapidly escalating. Thousands of appeals were filed, which resulted in many lowered valuations.

Now that property values have decreased again the county assessor is taking the first steps to lower appraisals.

This is a bit of good news for homeowners who are seeing the value of their homes shrink.

Commercial and industrial property appraisals will remain unchanged.

Note: In Arkansas, counties assess properties every third year. Thus, the next reappraisal was not scheduled until 2011. (For more details about the hows and whys of Arkansas appraisals, see my blog “Benton County Reappraisal Process is Complete” which I posted July 19, 2008.)

For more information:

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2009/03/02/news/030309bzequalization.txt

http://www.nwarktimes.com/adg/News/253986/