Four Pittsburgh wards, four reassessment stories
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Marilyn Pavlik recites a litany of increased assessments in a two-block length of dead-end Mary Street on Pittsburgh's South Side. The assessment on Ms. Pavlik's home went from $53,300 to $169,900.
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In Carrick, the reassessment elicits shrugs. In South Side, squeals. In Bloomfield, head scratching. The effects of the first-in-a-decade Allegheny County reassessment, now spreading into the suburbs, emerge in the data and reactions from city wards.
The reassessment takes effect in 2013, when millage likely will be reduced by more than one-third by the city and school district to avoid illegal windfalls. RealSTATs, a property sales tracking firm, compared 2011 assessments to the new values and estimated that, citywide, about 69,000 households will pay lower property taxes and 59,000 will pay more.
In Carrick, nearly 83 percent of properties can expect lower tax bills next year while 81 percent in Bloomfield and Friendship likely will see higher bills. In some places, seemingly inconsistent assessments create an uneasy balance of winners and losers.
"Any city, especially one as large as Pittsburgh, is very difficult to evaluate," said Wesley Graham, the county's acting chief assessment officer and an employee of Cole Layer Trumble, the consultant the county hired to oversee the $11 million reassessment.
"Sure, we were under the gun," he said of the court-ordered process that county officials fought for years. But the reassessment did a good job of assigning new values by matching properties to comparable parcels that sold in the same or similar neighborhoods between 2008 and 2010, he said.
'"There's a lot of things you have to look at before you say, 'This doesn't make sense.' "
There are plenty of puzzling examples, though.
Here's one: The front door of 4916 Cypress St. in Bloomfield is boarded up, and the front window of 1616 Buena Vista St. in the Central Northside wears a 2008 building permit. Both are vacant, neglected properties in neighborhoods whose market is strong, and both were highly regarded in their reassessments.
The Bloomfield house sold in October for $38,000. From $61,200, its assessment skyrocketed to $155,000.
First Published February 12, 2012 12:00 am
