Residential, commercial and industrial properties across the board in Habersham County could see an inevitable increase in value by next year, according to Habersham’s Board of Tax Assessors and its hired consultant.
Officials still can’t specify a percentage of how much values could rise, and evaluations could drop in some (particularly rural) areas across the county.
“I can say, overall, what we’re looking at residential-wise…your biggest changes are off properties that have not been appreciated correctly,” Kelly McCormick of McCormick & Associates said Tuesday during a tax assessor’s office board meeting.
In 2023, McCormick & Associates was hired for $1.1 million for three years to reassess residential, industrial and commercial properties countywide.
Next assessment notices are due to go out in July of 2025.
A breakdown of funds to McCormick includes $50,000 for the supervision of new software installation and $75,000 for commercial property assessments, as well as almost $1 million to reassess all other property. The reappraisal project came after a state review of tax assessment procedures in Habersham County discovered various communication issues and miscalculations by employees and former board members.
Over the summer of 2024, preliminary figures for Habersham’s latest digest suggested a 12% rise in growth – including residential, industrial and commercial property – compared to last year.
McCormick told Now Habersham on Tuesday that a projected tax digest has not been determined, though he suggested those numbers could be available by March.
Those numbers also estimated a value of $1.4 million in revenue from industrial property, plus a total of $3.7 million from commercial property, since last year. Total values for industrial property was just over $1.4 million and $3.3 million for commercial property the previous year. Projections in the 2024 digest estimate an additional $470,000 in revenue compared to 2023.
If values of commercial and industrial properties rise after reassessment, the county could see a significant boost in potential revenue and even greater digest numbers next year.
Habersham County’s Tax Assessor’s Office is undergoing a significant transformation with the introduction of McCormick & Associates. The company has begun implementing the widely-used WinGap software, a specialized system for property appraisal in Georgia, to replace the county’s previous software, BI-Tek. The new system aims to streamline the process of calculating property values and enhance overall efficiency.
Chief Appraiser Joan Church confirmed that the county’s staff is currently undergoing training to adapt to WinGap’s features and functionality.
In a recent update to the board, McCormick shared insights from their ongoing review of property values. While commercial and industrial property values in the county have been on the rise, residential property evaluations will show a more varied range. This is due to the fact that assessments for residential properties have not been updated uniformly, resulting in a mix of values across different areas.
“I can’t say anything for certain, but I think there will be a bigger increase overall in commercial and industrial than there will be in residential,” McCormick said. “A lot of what we see in residential isn’t so much an overall value increase, it’s more of there’s individual properties that maybe haven’t been visited as recently as others and need to be updated…you may have a set of properties that don’t increase at all, or increase by 5% or less, then you may have one that jumps 30% because of incorrect information, or they’ve upgraded the house. Those are the things we’re finding the most of.”
According to McCormick, with constant market fluctuations, land values have come up short – an issue he said isn’t isolated to Habersham.
“That is the entire state of Georgia,” McCormick said. “For the last three years, everybody has put so much money on improvement to try and keep up with this market, so nobody has had time to go back and try to redo all land values…we’re seeing that in every office we go into. There will be some increases in land values.”
Commercial property values, especially in Clarkesville, are currently being assessed “12%-15% lower than they should,” according to McCormick.
McCormick and his team are now working to correct these discrepancies, particularly in the northern parts of Habersham County. He also again noted that land values for commercial parcels remain a key factor in these adjustments.
“Still, the land values (for commercial property) in some areas are much lower than they need to be,” he said. “What we have to do is go through and get those land values corrected before I get building values where they need to be.”
As projected, McCormick went on to say land values on commercial property will “go up fairly substantially” once the reassessment project is complete.
