January 29, 2008, Ironton, OH - Ohio law mandates that County Auditor’s do a full blown appraisal every six years (the Sexennial Appraisal), with a statistical update (called the Triennial Update) to be done on the 3rd year between appraisals. Calendar year 2008 (which is tax year 2007) is the 3rd year between appraisal cycles for Lawrence County, and the tax bills this year reflect the new values set by the statistical update. These new values and their corresponding tax amounts are now showing on our website (www.lawrencecountyauditor.org).
Our 2005-2007 sales study of arms-length sales throughout the County shows us that properties in our County are selling—albeit with possibly a longer time-on-market than during 2000-2004—and that the selling prices are certainly not plummeting as the national media would have us believe. The county charges a conveyance fee of $4.00 for every $1000.00 of sale price. This fee has steadily increased since 2004, when the fee generated a little over $404,000; to 2007 when the fee generated a little over $440,000. This equates to $101,000,000 in real estate sales in 2004, increasing to $110,000,000 in real estate sales in 2007. The real estate market just hasn’t cooled off in Lawrence County like it has in many other places.
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When the Sales Ratio studies for 1/1/2004 through 12/31/2006 were done, Lawrence County was ordered by the Ohio Department of Taxation to increase Agricultural property values by 10% across the county, and increase residential values by 13% across the county. Instead of using the blanket approach on the residential properties (because we have far more residential sales to analyze than agricultural sales) we broke the county down into neighborhoods and applied different percentage increases to each neighborhood. In this way the areas that needed more of an increase due to market conditions were given that increase, while areas which needed less of an increase were also taken into consideration. In doing this the order from the Department of Taxation was carried out, while at the same time treating the property owners of Lawrence County in a fairer manner.
A part of this good real estate market is most likely attributed to the fact that Lawrence County has the lowest tax rates of any county in the State of Ohio. According to information from the Ohio Department of Taxation, the highest tax rate in Ohio in 2006 (which is the last year the figures were available) was in Cuyahoga County with an average full tax rate for residential property of 112.50 mills (a mill is one dollar for every $1,000 of taxable value). The corresponding rate in Lawrence County was 36.62 mills, with the state average of 85.24 mills.
The Auditor’s Office is responsible for the valuation of over 54,000 parcels of land in Lawrence County. We are not perfect, and there is the possibility for mistakes. If we have only a 1% margin of error that means that roughly 540 parcels have the possibility of errors. Due to this fact, if anyone believes their property value is incorrect they may file a complaint with the County Board of Revision up to March 31, 2008. The complaint forms are available in the Auditor’s Office or on this website. In filing a complaint, the property owner needs to be prepared to state his or her opinion of the value of the property in question, along with proof to substantiate the claim (such as recent appraisal, recent sale of property, or sales of comparable property).