The Davidson County Tax assessor sent out the assessments for 2017 last week.
The average increase in assessment for all residential property increased @ 37% which means a 37% increase in taxes due.
I have heard of some folks in the 60% range . . . YIKES!
This is one of the costs of living in an “IT City.”
Truthfully, we Nashvillians have had it darned easy in terms of taxes relative to most other cities in the country . . . and since I’ve been a REALTOR (1993-present), the tax assessments have been significantly less than true market values . . . so I guess it’s time to pay the piper now, eh?
This is not happening without lots of grumbling, growling, and gnashing of teeth by home-owners. The County assessor does have an appeal process which truly is quite fair . . . more than 60% of the appeals win. The fact is that it would be “fair” for the tax assessor to assess our properties at market value, but most of their assessments do have enough grace not to be at that level.
For most folks, this tax increase is an inconvenience, but what about those folks who are on fixed incomes?
My diagnosis is that this significant increase directly affects housing affordability and will be yet another catalyst for pushing many people out of the urban core and will ultimately create a labor crisis for all of the new businesses springing up to serve the increase in the population of customers with fat wallets.
If we’re going to push them out, we’d better be working VERY hard on developing an economical way for them to commute from the burbs to where the jobs are . . . a la MASS TRANSIT.
I’ve been preachin’ this for years and am flabbergasted at the snail’s pace the former and current Mayors have been going. This is a project that should have launched 10 years ago . . . It’ll take 20+ to build the whole thing, and we continual to “try” to come up with a viable plan when we should be DOing.
Ah well . . . eventually, it’ll be “too late” and the “It City” will fall from the pedestal due to gridlock and/or labor shortage . . .
sigh . . .
That’ll probably be our next Mayor’s problem to fix, and the naysayers will blame THAT poor Mayor for our fall from greatness.
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