A predominantly Black and historic neighborhood in Chapel Hill is facing increased taxes after the latest round of Orange County’s property valuations.

North Carolina counties are required to revalue properties regularly to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of the property tax burden. The Orange County Tax Office recently completed its 2021 revaluation and mailed notice of new values to all property owners in late March.

The three basic approaches Orange County uses to arrive at a “fair market value” include a cost approach, which estimates the land value, a market approach, which refers to prior market sales, and an income approach, which appraises net income.

For this year’s revaluations, however, some longtime residents do not feel they have received a fair assessment of their land.

Chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners Renee Price said lifelong residents in the Northside neighborhood have seen their property values double in just a few years. She said this increase in property taxes will be burdensome, even with exemptions and financial assistance.

“It has caused quite a bit of consternation for some people because when they got the announcements in the mail, they saw that their property values – the appraised value – had gone up significantly,” Price said.

According to the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, an organization that seeks to “honor, renew, and build community in the historic neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” long-term, Black-owned Northside properties are drastically overvalued in comparison to investor-owned rentals and other nearby properties in mostly white, affluent neighborhoods.

The center said, on average, Black residents in local historic neighborhoods saw a 53 percent rise in taxes this year and an overvaluation of roughly $107,000 dollars each.

Price said some of these overvaluations stem from new market sales, which effect more than just the Northside community, but also Tin Top, Pine Knolls, and rural Northern Orange.

Properties in the Northside neighborhood (photo via the Town of Chapel Hill)

“What we’re having to contend with is investors and people investing in properties in these older neighborhoods,” Price said. “When these properties sell for over 200 or 300 thousand dollars, it’s going to affect the rest of the area.”

In comparison to the 53 percent increase in Northside’s property tax valuation, the Jackson Center said more affluent communities’ valuations largely remained the same – with three neighborhoods near Northside only seeing changes between negative one and 13 percent.

“From a personal experience, my property tax valuation went up three times from what it was last year, as opposed to neighborhoods who are not even a mile away did not go up even a percentage”  said Kathy Atwater, a community advocacy specialist at the Jackson Center and a 4th Generation Northside resident.

Atwater said to address these concerns, the center has penned a community letter to the Orange County Commissioners asking them to reduce and correct the property tax valuations for homeowners in Northside as well extend the timeline for Northside residents to make informal appeals.

The county’s informal appeal process is currently underway and ends this Friday, April 30.

If residents miss this week’s deadline, a formal appeal process will begin May 3 and conclude on June 30, however Atwater said that process is more of a burden to the individual resident. A formal appeal will require the case to be heard by the Orange County Board of Equalization and Review.

“The individual owner has to go before the board to make an appeal,” Atwater said. “Again, given that we’re in a pandemic and COVID environment – that’s not safe, that’s not healthy – and again we’re talking about elder residents, so it does not take into consideration the people that you’re supposed to be serving.”

Property owner’s real property tax bill will be mailed in late July or early August to reflect the new revaluation tax assessment.

Lead photo via WRAL. 


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