Asheville – Following allegations that tax assessments had been inflated for people of color and low-income families and slashed for the rich, white, and connected, Buncombe County entered into a contract with Keene Mass Appraisal Consulting of Philadelphia for an independent review. “These allegations are common in the US, especially in large cities,” said principal Kevin Keene. “So, what I want to commend you for is, I’m here because you pushed back.”
Keene said he came to Buncombe County to get data for himself. He said he toured all 27 of the “communities” used for appraisal purposes and visited most neighborhoods within them. “I’ve seen pretty much what’s out there with my own eyes.”
Next, he made a table of time-adjusted sales data, adding or subtracting appreciation or depreciation for the time between the sale and the appraisal dates. Then, he had to merge this data with Census data because appraisers aren’t supposed to keep data on the race or income of a home’s inhabitants. Keene added that tracking is impossible because people move and change jobs so much, Census data is outdated as soon as it is published.
He also interviewed everybody in the Assessment Department to see “how they looked at the data.” Then, he reviewed the county’s historical practices, noting that when systemic bias exists, it is often baked in from the beginning.
Before he could do the ratio study, which compares assessed values to selling prices, he had to remove from consideration properties that clearly did not sell at fair market value. Examples would be foreclosures, gifts to relatives, fire sales, and non-straightforward contracts where prepayments were made long before the sale.
Keene also analyzed errors. He said they typically affect a significant number of properties in any assessment, but he wanted to see if there were any patterns. He found no bias associated with the race or income level of households. “There are some other—I’ll call them distortions in the assessment base—but these can be corrected.”
Tax Assessor Keith Miller summarized Keene’s findings. “There was no evidence of systemic racial or income discrimination in the assessment process, and this includes the Assessment Department employees and supporting processes. The assessment process is “blind and fair” and does not consider demographics in determining value. There is no evidence of overt political influence in the assessment process.”
Miller said Keene gave his office 28 recommendations, seven of which pertained to equity and fairness. The recommendations are designed to increase accuracy, improve public relations, and decrease the number of complaints and appeals the county receives.
To improve data quality, Keene recommended adding a dedicated appraiser for assessing homes valued over $1 million, which had already been done, and doing the same for manufactured homes. A customer service unit would help keep data up-to-date. He also suggested coming up with a more thorough system for validating sales, relisting eight Census blocks described as being “in decline,” and eventually relisting all 130,000 properties in the county.
To refine assessment algorithms, he proposed using regression analysis in mass appraisals to identify the most influential home features driving market values. The county, for example, has been underestimating geospatial data like proximity to amenities and nuisances. He also suggested partnering with a local university for intern labor and lobbying the General Assembly for more tax relief.
Commissioner Parker Sloan, recalling anecdotal newspaper stories with side-to-side photos of luxury homes that paid less taxes than ramshackle abodes, asked how other analyses had found discrimination against minorities. Keene replied, “There is much more non-market activity at the high end of the market and the low end of the market. If you don’t screen that out, it becomes really easy to look at that and say, ‘Oh, there’s bias,’ and what many of these studies will do is they’ll say, ‘Well, on the low end of the market, you tend to overvalue, which is true for most mass appraisal systems, and if you don’t screen the data out, it’s difficult to see to what extent that’s true.
“And then they say, ‘Well, it’s mostly minorities who are buying the low-end properties,’ which is itself a racist statement. But they conflate price point with race or income, so therefore when there is bias that looks like it’s traceable to price points, they conflate that with race or income, and if that’s your methodology for making these accusations, you’re going to probably be right a lot of the time, but it just happened that right here today in Buncombe County, it’s just not true.”