North Tidewater News

The value of homes in Hampton increased again during 2023, according to a report delivered to City Council Wednesday by Interim City Assessor Libby Griebel. The median sale price rose to $266,000.

 In fact, 90.2% of residential properties saw increases and another 7.6% stayed at the same value, with the mean or average value of a residential property increasing by $16,162, not counting new buildings or those with permits for improvements.

 “We saw a reduction in the number of home sales because of lower inventory,” Griebel said. “But the sales prices increased, with the median sales price going up more than $13,000 over last year.”

 The total residential value increased by 6.7%, compared to last year, when values went up by 10.3%.

City Manager Mary Bunting noted that the city’s tax rate has gone down by 8 cents per $100 of value in the past few years. She noted that she will again review whether the City can lower the tax rate, but said: “It’s too early in the budget process to know if we will be able to lower the tax rate or not. We will look at that as we get more information further along in the General Assembly’s process. We will be having budget discussions at each meeting until the final budget is adopted.”

 She specifically cited needing to understand what unfunded mandates might be passed along to localities.

 The Office of the Assessor of Real Estate determines valuation by neighborhood, not individual homes, and excludes irregular sales, such as foreclosures and sales to family members.

 Here is a map of neighborhoods, along with their increases. The increase in value was 10% or less for the majority of homes.

 Apartments and other multifamily properties went up by about 0.8% in value, a much slower rate of growth than in the past few years.

 Business properties saw increases as well, averaging 3.1% — lower than the 5% increase from a year ago, but the same as the increase in reported in early 2022.

 In total, the value of all properties in the city reached $21.09 billion. About 22% of the city’s properties are exempt from taxes, primarily those owned by the federal, state, and local government, as well as educational institutions like Hampton University. That knocks the taxable property values down to $15.7 billion.

Postcards will be mailed on Feb. 9 to all property owners whose property changed in value. The new assessments will be available online on that date as well, at https://Hampton.gov/gisportal.

 These values will begin with tax bills for the next fiscal year (FY25), with the first bill due in December.  

Residents who have questions about their assessment can call the Citizens Contact Center at 727-8311, or 311 from a landline, or send an email to AssessorsWebmail@hampton.gov to get in touch with the appraiser who conducted the assessment in their neighborhood. That is part of the office appeal process, which lasts until March 11. The formal Board of Review appeal goes through April 11. Residents are encouraged to access information online at Hampton.gov/assessor.

Original source can be found here.