Indiana county assessors last week mailed out this year’s property tax assessments, and the increases have many homeowners in shock. If you’re unhappy, St. Joseph County’s assessor advises you to appeal.
St. Joseph County Assessor Mike Castellon says two main factors have driven up many homeowners’ assessments this year: the state’s estimates on construction costs, and the state’s estimates of sales data from comparable homes in an area, a method called mass appraisal.
"I just don't agree with the mass appraisal technique that the state does," Castellon says. "When you use mass appraisal, you're looking at a bunch of properties but you're using a very small amount of homes to develop your trending models. And I think that creates a scenario where you have some over-assessed properties and some under-assessed properties."
But Castellon thinks he can make assessments more accurate next year by work that a hired firm is doing this year to make neighborhood boundaries more accurate, something that hasn’t been done since 1995.
"When you have neighborhoods out by Harter Heights, where you have the University of Notre Dame building all these brand new homes, if you don't stratify those neighborhoods, you have older homes that were built in the '50s and '60s being compared to brand new homes, and that's an unfair assessment," Castellon said.
