This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Home values are up - way up. So are tax appeals.
Perturbed over rapidly rising property values, thousands of Utah homeowners are challenging their assessments.
Those appeals have hit abnormal highs in Weber and Davis counties this year and nearly tripled in Utah County. Salt Lake County reported a more modest gain.
The surge comes after a historical leap in property assessments, in which home values vaulted 20 percent or more in the state's four most populous counties.
That sticker shock has residents such as Gordon Tyler shouting for change. The retired Centerville man can't stomach the $40,000 spurt in his latest property assessment - not when his $321,000 home would come with a $300 tax hike.
While Tyler's property values didn't appreciate as fast as most Davis County residents, whose assessments bounced an average of 19.5 percent, the increase hits his budget particularly hard. The 72-year-old relies on a fixed income and doesn't qualify for any of the county's tax abatements.
"If it continues to go up $300 each year," he said, "I'll be taxed out of my home."
But Tyler has won a tax appeal before. He hopes to prevail again this year.
So do more than 14,000 other residents in Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Utah counties. They have clogged county offices with hundreds - sometimes thousands - of appeals more than last year.
Most counties characterized the tax filings as a significant spike. Salt Lake County reported "business as usual."
"It's nothing out of the ordinary," said Assistant Tax Administrator Liz Fehrmann.
Utah's most populous county (with nearly 1 million people) reported 6,500 appeals this year - an increase of more than 1,000 appeals from last year. But this bump looks more like a dip when examined with the past seven years. Since 2000, Salt Lake County has averaged about 6,700 challenges annually.
That's not the case in the other three counties, which have reported a rise in tax filings over historic averages. The escalation is particularly evident in Utah County, where officials logged three times as many appeals as last year.
"There definitely was a significant jump," said Utah County Clerk/Auditor Bryan Thompson.
Like his counterparts in Davis and Weber counties, Thompson said the flurry of tax challenges has much to do with the rising property values, which hopped 25 percent in Utah County this year. That compares to 23 percent in Salt Lake County and 25 percent to 30 percent in Weber County.
While the hot housing market has cooled of late, Thompson said the property assessments continue to reflect Jan. 1 prices. Not surprisingly, that leads to challenges.
But Utah's County's appeal rate really isn't too shabby, Thompson said. This year's filings account for just 2 percent of the county's 140,000 parcels.
"That is a really fair number," he said. "Essentially what it is saying is that 98 out of every 100 parcels fell into the right category."
Ronald W. Mortensen, co-founder of CitizensForTaxFairness.org, disagrees. Because of the complexity of the appeals process, only slivers of dissatisfied homeÂowners challenge their assessments, he said. People may want to fight, but they don't know how.
"The appeals are way understated," Mortensen said. "Yes, they are up. But that is just the tip of the iceberg."
County assessors concede the appraisal process is imperfect. While state law requires a physical reappraisal of properties every five years, county officials must rely on mathematics to adjust home values during off-years. They report too little staff to operate otherwise.
Trouble is, the county's averages aren't always accurate.
In a densely packed North Salt Lake subdivision, for example, homes were appraised at $100,000 apiece - even though the size of the houses and lots varied.
"When you've got that many properties to do," said Davis County Assessor Jim Ivie, "you are bound to have some properties come in higher than they should."
And so residents along the Wasatch Front are fighting, a move that can pay off. In Salt Lake County since 2000, more than two-thirds of those who challenged their valuations prevailed.
For his part, Tyler has submitted sales data showing lower prices on comparable homes and cited inaccuracies in the assessor's record - all to trim his Centerville house's value to $289,000, or $6,000 higher than last year's assessment.
The former Salt Lake City businessman said, "I just never anticipated what is happening with our taxes."