So Why Did the Assessed Value of Your Home Increase This Year?
If you own a residential property in Alexandria City or Fairfax County, you should have received a notification about the assessed value of your home recently. Chances are good that it went up this year, as 3.40% of residential values in Alexandria City posted an increase and 2.17% of those in Fairfax County increased in 2018.
The positive change in assessed value of your home and in the average changes both county- and city-wide have positive implications for the market conditions in our area, demonstrating a strong economy, a large number of high-paying jobs in many Alexandria neighborhoods, and a robust real estate market, in turn.
Source
Assessed property values are determined by several things. Two major influencers are Equalization changes — whether the market-driven value increases or declines — and Growth changes — value changes due to structural changes (new construction, remodeling, rezoning, etc). Of the 259,444 Fairfax County properties with an assessment change in 2018, 251,141 were due to Equalization changes and only 8,303 were due to Growth changes (source). This explains why your assessment might have gone up even if you did not do any remodeling this year: as the market conditions improved, so did the value of your home.Appraisers look at sales from the previous year and the prices of recently sold properties in your neighborhood, adjusting for differences to determine an estimated value of each property that did not change hands. As sales prices increase (while still reflecting fair market value), the value of unsold homes generally increases, too. Thus, an overall positive change in real estate assessments typically reflects and simultaneously influences a strong market and a strong economy.If you don’t think your property has been correctly assessed — either because it does not reflect fair market value, does not align with the assessed properties around you, or contains errors in the property description — you can file an appeal. For more information, see the Fairfax County Government website here or the Alexandria City website here.