Assessed Value Drops Statewide; First Time Since Recordkeeping Began in '33
By Paul McIntosh, Executive Director
pmcintosh@counties.org
For the first time since recordkeeping began in 1933, Board of Equalization Chair Betty Yee reported that year-over-year growth of California’s assessed property values was negative. The hardest hit counties include Merced (-13.4%), Riverside (-10.5%), and San Joaquin (-10.2%). The total statewide growth from 2008-09 to 2009-10 is -2.4%, which represents $107.2 billion of value, bringing California’s assessed roll down to $4.448 trillion.
While the decline is unquestionably bad news for many of the state’s local governments, it is not as bad as some analysts had predicted. A widely reported study several months ago from Beacon Economics predicted that statewide property taxes would decline by 6.14% in 2009, slide another 3.61% in 2010, and not begin to rise even slightly until 2012. Likewise, the Legislative Analyst’s Office forecast in November that the schools’ share of property tax would drop 6.4% in 2009-10, though that office also predicted it would begin to rise in the next year.
Overall, thirty-seven counties are seeing their assessed value decline, one has no change, and twenty will realize at least a little growth, though ten of those were less than 2%. San Francisco and Trinity have the highest growth at 7.1% and 5.3% respectively. Locally assessed properties fared worse than state-assessed properties, which rose a modest 0.5% ($400 million).
The Northern San Joaquin Valley is worst hit, with those counties losing 9.9% of their value. The rest of the Central Valley fared better, with declines around 4.5%, but still worse than other regions of the state. Los Angeles County has the only roll measured in the trillions ($1.083 trillion), and its roll dropped 0.6% ($6 billion).
You can find a spreadsheet detailing the county-by-county changes in locally assessed and state-assessed property here.
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