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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Janesville Residential Property Value Drops 7.5% in Year

Janesville homes lost nearly $216 million in assessed property value from last year, according to a Department of Revenue report released Friday.

The falling values led to a 7.56 percent decline in residential property citywide. What is most alarming is the short time-frame of only one year for such a steep decline in home values. Janesville's total property value (commercial, residential, manufacturing, AG, etc.,) for 2010 is $3.99 billion, down from $4.25 billion in 2009 for a total 6.12 percent decline.

According to the Department of Revenue, nearly every city in Wisconsin saw its equalized value decline this year. In neighboring Walworth County, the city of Delavan lost 3.64 percent in residential value while all property value city-wide lost 4.67 percent. Lake Geneva residential lost 9.85 percent, all property lost 6.07 percent. Kenosha reported a 5.8 percent drop in property value to $6.4 billion. Racine residential lost 6 percent, all property saw a 4.65 percent decline.

Statewide, property value declined 3.1 percent while home value fell 3.5 percent, which was better than the national average of 5.6 percent. While southern Wisconsin residential property generally took a big hit, commercial property values remained relatively less volatile.

This year is only the third time in the last 50 years that Wisconsin property values fell statewide, and is the largest decline in value since at least 1959. Property values fell 0.5 percent in 2009 and 2 percent in 1986.

VIEW % CHANGE MAP OF EQUALIZED VALUES BY COUNTY here.

Note: The map above originally depicted assessed values for 2009-2010. Soon after this posting, the revenue department changed it to the less offensive 2008 - 2009 map of equalized values.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope they plan to re-assess for tax purposes. That would be nice. On a brighter note, if one had $4 billion they could buy the city and kick out a whole bunch of people.

Lou Kaye said...

Last year the city opted not to re-assess residential property because of the cost to do so. Instead, they assessed commercial property which actually saw less change overall. However, by leaving the residential assessments alone, city officials can boast about not raising the tax levy as much.

The Janesville Gazette posted a short brief on the revenue report in todays' paper without touching on local numbers. This is sour news for sure, but should newspapers avoid it simply because they want to present a different reality?

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