Franklin County: Appraisal vs. Actual Value (sales, real estate, how much)

[vafiddler]

Hi- In casual looking for real estate in Franklin County, I've become hooked on the county's online real estate records search <http://arcims.webgis.net/va/franklin/>. I was really hoping someone could offer insight into the usefulness of using the tax assessment records to get some sort of ballpark estimate for what houses and land are worth. In my limited comparisons it seems the tax assesments are generally lower than the asking price for real estate, but I never know how much the houses end up selling for. Any thoughts? I'm sure it has a lot to do with when the property was assessed, but any general rules of thumb would be appreciated. Have any of yall compared what you paid to what the tax assesment says your property is worth?
Thanks,
Matt

[seanpecor]

The county real estate assessment values in the Franklin County GIS are closer now to market values because properties were reassessed for 2008. In 2007, they were wildly lower than market values. I think that in some cases, you're going to find that the market values are a bit higher, and in other cases, a bit lower.

If you give yourself a crash course in SQL you can use the query button in the mapping data site to pull sales transactions, and export results to Excel. You can then compare assessment values to sale transactions on property bought/sold in the last 12 months.

Sean

[seanpecor]

I should also mention that, so far, all the economic slowdown seems to have done with most non-lake property values is curtail their appreciation. Of late the new home inventory around where we live has been selling at a higher rate, where earlier during the spring and summer there was a definite lull. I'm thankful to see that investors for the most part are nowhere to be seen, thereby mitigating appreciation.

Sean

[vafiddler]

Thanks Sean. Thats a big help. Learning the SQL wasn't bad at all, so now I'm playing with all sorts of new stats!
Thanks,
Matt