Dennis Norman
Last week I did a post after reading an article on StlToday.com about the change in property values being made by St Louis area assessors from 2007 to 2009. As I pointed out in my article I assumed the values shown by the assessors including ALL types of property and not just homes, however my analysis was based only upon the sale prices of homes.
Prior to doing the post I had requested just the residential data from the assessor’s office for the area counties but had not been able to obtain that data. Subsequently I did receive the information from the St. Charles County assessor and am happy to say I can now do comparison between the assessors values and home prices that is more “apples to apples”.
Source: St. Charles County Assessor
As you can see in the chart above, in 2007 the St. Charles County Assessor valued all the residential property in St. Charles County at $4.78 billion. Over the next two years there was $152.9 million worth of new construction bringing the total to $4.93 billion. In 2009 the St. Charles County Assessor put a total value of $4.67 billion on the residential property in St. Charles County for a decrease in value of $265.9 million or 5.56 percent from 2007 which is much more in line with the 10.7 percent decline in home sale prices during the period.
Source Mid-American Regional Information Systems, Inc.
When discussing the above numbers with the St. Charles CountyAssessor’s office, they pointed out that, with regard to using median home prices for comparision, “Inherent in that analysis is the assumption that the composite of home were similar. The danger is that either more higher priced homes sold, or conversely more lower priced homes sold within the selected areas and time frame”. For those of you that have read my ramblings for a while, you will know I agree. I have commented on this many times that, even though the National Association of Realtors and many others, base changes in home prices on “median” home prices, I have always found that to be somewhat flawed and would much prefer to see an analysis of resale prices of the same homes, such as reported by the Case-Shiller index however St. Louis is not included in that index.
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