Yesterday a loyal reader sent one of my articles to Dinah Kilgore, the Executive Director and Chief Appraiser of the El Paso Central Appraisal District. In the article , I questioned how property values could rise, if our population growth was fairly stagnant. You know, supply and demand. Here’s Ms. Kilgore’s reply:
Ok- we did see a lower # of months inventory of new homes – 4-5 months county wide (end of 2016 into 2017). That makes it a sellers market and they can increase sale amount because there is a lower # of homes. We also saw an increase in permits so that means homes are selling at a steader clip. The city had a 4% increase over last years certified values. We had been seeing within the city limits about a 1% the last couple of years. Areas like Canutillo, Clint, and Socorro saw higher numbers. The roll back rate is the rate that an entity can increase without going to the voters. That would be 8% of the effective rate; the effective rate is the rate that is needed to generate the same amount of revenue as the prior year using the new certified values. Out of that 4% increase about 1.5% was new construction, so actually you could say close to half of the increase was attributed to new construction. Does this address your questions?
Well, does it?
Good explanation. Still, there is the nagging question: If folks are moving out of El Paso and into Socorro, Clint, Fabens, Canutillo, etc then would there be a definite down tick to property values there?
Supply and demand are like the blades of scissors. Talking about just one and not the other won’t give us a full picture. You have to throw in the economist’s favorite line: “All other things being equal.” That is, a change in demand with no change in supply, or vice versa.
What I would like to see someone do is find the homes of the City Council members and the CAD employees and see if their homes value increased at the same rate as the rest of the city. Or do they get special treatment and have their home valued lower than they should be so they’re paying less taxes?
So long as they’re building houses, taxes can be raised ?
That’s odd because despite what the realtors and city are telling you. Look around there are a lot of empty new houses and a lot of older homes empty as well.
On top of that they have entered a race with Wal greens as to whom can build the most structures. Thus hotels galore with less than a 30% occupancy rate which is considered a failure in other cities.
Do they believe that all these structures plus a money losing stadium and soon to be a money losing soccer stadium are going to cause a stampede to El Paso? Something like the old westerns depicting the Oklahoma land rush.
If you or the suckers in government believe that. I recommend less alcohol, less drugs, less staring into the sun and a neurologist. Everyone knows stadiums are known as wasted investments.