The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Areas of biggest growth in East River Valley and Gunnison
[ By Katherine Nettles ]
It’s no surprise that the overall real estate market in Gunnison County is booming, and property owners across the Gunnison Valley this spring saw evidence of that as they recently received a 2021 Notice of Valuation from the Gunnison County assessor’s office. Many people in the more developed areas around the city of Gunnison and in the north end of the valley have opened their mail in the past month to find a big jump in their property value, which could mean higher property taxes down the road.
The 2021 reappraisal is based on values established as of June 30, 2020, and will be in effect for 2021 and 2022. The reappraisal will result in total assessed value for the county increasing by around 16-percent, although an exact number will not be available until all assessment appeals have been settled.
“The bottom line is values went up, and they went up quite a bit. They varied by property and by area of the county,” said Gunnison County Assessor’s Office communications manager William Spicer.
Spicer explained that the notices of value that went out really represent the change in value over a two-year time period from June 2018 through June 2020.
The report divides the county into four different study areas, with Economic Area 1 being the city of Gunnison and immediate vicinity; Economic Area 2 is the town of Crested Butte; Economic Area 6 is the rest of the East River Valley aside from the town of Crested Butte; and Economic Area 8 is rural Gunnison County, such as Arrowhead, Pitkin, Marble and the area around Blue Mesa Reservoir. While Areas 1, 2 and 6 saw a “pretty decent appreciation,” explained Spicer, Area 8 did not see as much.
Single-family homes across the county went up in both median price and number of sales from 2019 to 2020, with the median price changing from $425,000 to $550,000. The number of single-family residence sales went from 325 in 2019 to 450 during the new study period.
Condominiums and manufactured housing actually showed the biggest appreciation, said Spicer. “Which makes sense because they tend to be the entry point to the market. So they showed more upward pressure.”
Vacant land saw a pretty big appreciation as well, and went up the most in Areas 1, 2 and 6, but remained static in Area 8.
“Agricultural land is very stable, and did go up but only by a small amount,” added Spicer.
Aside from updating property tax indicators, the assessors report also helps identify trends within the real estate market.
Spicer pointed out that the median increase in commercial valuations was two percent. This may have been due to the pandemic, since “there weren’t really any commercial sales at all from March through June 2020,” he said.
“I think later in the year, some businesses saw pretty good revenues. But for residential, we saw a really strong market all the way through the year. We were all surprised that residential sales went up and were a real hot spot,” he said of the so-called Zoom-Boom. He reflected that the highly sought-out quiet places with lots of outdoor space and trail access saw sales volume and prices continue to climb through that June period.
Appeals almost finished
Spicer said the appeals process has been steady but by no means a flood this cycle.
“We’re a little surprised, it has been slower than we anticipated,” he said. That still means calls coming in throughout each day, as people have until June 1 to protest their property valuations.
“It’s a really important part of the process, so we know we’re going to take a lot of time explaining and showing people the methods we have of calculating the values we determine,” said Spicer.
He noted that the county does not yet know how personal property and state assessed property values will ultimately change, or how appeals will affect the outcome, as some appeals will result in a lowered assessment value. “So there are some pieces that are just not known right now,” he said. “But I think a final answer in the range of 15 percent to 17 percent [valuation increase] is likely.”
Property taxes
All property taxes collected stay within Gunnison County and fund services provided to Gunnison County properties. Because of repeal of the Gallagher Amendment in 2020, the residential tax assessment rate (7.15 percent) is not going to change. Some assessed values are going to be significantly higher, said Spicer—maybe 20 to 25 percent higher that they were in the previous cycle. But that doesn’t mean the taxes will be that much higher. About one half of each tax bill goes to the school district, and that portion of a person’s bill will go up in relation to their property assessment. The other half will likely not go up that much, but will depend on the levies that other taxing entities set for the year.
However, a number of taxing districts within Gunnison County are considering a tax issue on the ballot this year. The fire district is one, since as Spicer phrased it, “they have been taking quite a tax revenue squeeze.” The school district is another, and some of the area municipalities are considering ballot issues as well. “And while the tax rates depend on if those ballot initiatives pass, if they do pass then the public is voting to have their taxes increase.”
All the sales are documented on the county assessor’s website at www.gunnisoncounty.org and can be used to review how the department got to its new property valuations.
