Opinion
SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2011-370
07-16-2012
Georgia Komitee v. Town of Dover
Note: Decisions of a three-justice panel are not to be considered as precedent before any tribunal.
ENTRY ORDER
APPEALED FROM:
Property Valuation and Review
Division
DOCKET NO. PVR 2010-124
In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:
Taxpayer appeals pro se from a decision by the state appraiser, which upheld the Town's valuation of her property. She argues that the appraiser erred by relying on outdated sales data in determining the fair market value (FMV) of her property. We affirm.
Taxpayer owns a one-and-a-half story condominium in the Town of Dover. The condo is a "Shoreham Model," built in 2002 with 1824 square feet of finished area; it is in average condition. Following a town-wide reappraisal in 2010, the town listers set the property's value at $325,000. Taxpayer appealed this valuation to the board of civil authority, which denied her appeal. Taxpayer then appealed to the state appraiser.
At the hearing before the state appraiser, taxpayer presented testimony and a written report from a licensed real estate appraiser. In his testimony, the appraiser estimated the FMV of the property at $250,000 based on the sales of comparable properties, all which were sold after April 1, 2010. The expert also calculated a different FMV based on an analysis of the market value differences between two- and three-level units in the same planned unit development (PUD) as taxpayer's unit. The appraiser calculated the difference in sale price of two- and three-level units between 2007 and 2008, and concluded that two-level units were worth 79% of three-level unit. The expert then looked at seven sales of three-level units during the 2009-2010 period, some occurring after April 1, 2010, calculated the mean sale price as $290,000 and took 79% to arrive at a FMV for taxpayer's property of $229,100.
The Town objected to taxpayer's expert's comparison sales appraisal, asserting that the report was invalid because some of the sales used in the appraiser's report occurred after the grand list date of April 1, 2010. The Town also challenged the expert's methodology of assessing the difference between two- and three-level condos, arguing that this difference did not correspond to value because most three-level units utilized a finished basement area. The Town argued that its own valuation was more accurate since it was based on the number of bedrooms as well as the square footage above grade with a set value for finished space below grade. In support of its own valuation, the Town submitted three pages of sales. It also offered a history of sales of the Shoreham Model condos in the same PUD, noting that the units had sold in a range of $146 to $178 per square foot of finished area. These sales occurred in March 2005, March 2006, February 2007, and April 2007. The Town further asserted that end units, such as taxpayer's property, sell at a higher premium and thus it was reasonable to set taxpayer's unit in 2010 at $192 per square foot. The Town maintained that the property was valued fairly and equitably at $325,000.
Following a site visit, the appraiser affirmed the Town's valuation of the property. The appraiser agreed with the Town that taxpayer's expert comparable sales value was not usable because the sales occurred after April 1, 2010 and therefore would not have been available to the Town in establishing the property's FMV during the town-wide reappraisal. The appraiser stated that the Town had produced four sales of Shoreham units that sold between 2005 and 2007 in support of its assessment and concluded that taxpayer could not overcome the presumption that the Town's valuation of $325,000 was correct. This appeal followed.
Taxpayer argues that the Board erred in rejecting the opinion of her expert appraiser that the property was worth $229,100. She maintains that the sales relied upon by the Town to support its valuation were outdated and they bore no reasonable relationship to the FMV of her property. Taxpayer asserts that the comparable sales that she offered were more relevant than those offered by the Town because they were closer in time to the April 1, 2010 grand list date.
On appeal, we defer to decisions of the state appraiser. Great Bay Hydro Corp. v. Town of Derby, 2007 VT 10, ¶ 5, 181 Vt. 574 (mem.). "We assess decisions of the state appraiser to ensure that they are supported by findings rationally drawn from the evidence and are based on a correct interpretation of the law." Id. (citation omitted). "[W]e will not disturb a fair market value supported by the evidence and findings absent a clear error of law." Id.
As we have explained, when a taxpayer appeals an assessment to the state appraiser, there is a presumption that the town's assessment is valid. City of Barre v. Town of Orange, 152 Vt. 442, 444 (1989). If the taxpayer presents evidence that his or her property was appraised above fair market value, then the presumption disappears and "it is up to the town to introduce evidence that justifies its appraisal." Adams v. Town of West Haven, 147 Vt. 618, 619-20 (1987). Even when the presumption of validity disappears, however, the ultimate burden of persuading the appraiser of the correct appraisal "remains with the taxpayer." Id. at 620 n.*.
As an initial matter, we clarify that taxpayer's expert offered two different estimates of FMV. He arrived at the $250,000 value by using a sales comparison approach. The expert also included an addendum in his report wherein he estimated the FMV of taxpayer's property at $229,100. In this approach, the expert relied on sales between 2007 and 2008 of two- and three-level units in taxpayer's PUD to calculate the "market value difference" between such units, and then used 2010 sales of three-level units to arrive at a current two-unit valuation. The Town challenged this approach because it asserted that valuation based on the difference between two-and three-level units did not accurately reflect market conditions. The appraiser credited the Town's position on this point, and taxpayer does not challenge this ruling on appeal.
The expert's $250,000 estimate, on the other hand, relied exclusively on sales that post-dated the April 1, 2010 grand list date. As the appraiser found, these sales were not available to the Town in making its grand list and, thus, the Town cannot have committed error by failing to rely upon them. The Town justified its appraisal by relying on four comparable sales. While these sales occurred between three to five years before the April 1, 2010 list date, that does not make them irrelevant, as taxpayer suggests. These sales represented the best information available to the Town. The appraiser found this evidence persuasive and acted within his discretion in doing so. The appraiser reasonably concluded that taxpayer failed to meet her burden of showing that the Town's appraisal was incorrect.
Affirmed.
BY THE COURT:
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Paul L. Reiber, Chief Justice
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Marilyn S. Skoglund, Associate Justice
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Brian L. Burgess, Associate Justice