Fayette debuts new assessment Web site”They’ve tried to make it easier to use and faster to download,” said Hall. “And a special feature that has been added has been that ‘sales search’ (function). It will be a good resource for people who are trying to do some research on (real estate) sales within the county. That will be available (today) at some point.”
Hercik said sales data on the new Web site, which uses the same address as the old one, will be updated every month to include all sales filed with the county Recorder of Deeds Office. “It’s just a huge wealth of information that we’re adding,” he said. Property owners can use that information, now and in the future, to check on the veracity of the assessed value placed on their properties. Hercik said sales data can be accessed by clicking on a new box called “sales criteria” that will appear at the top of the screen.
The Web site’s look will also change to more of a white background, for more economical printing that requires less toner, said Hercik. The screen that shows a sketch of the property has also been “cleaned up” to eliminate overlapping dimension numbers that were sometimes difficult to read, he said.
A new feature of the improved Web site will be an e-mail box that will allow a user to automatically forward a given page to another person’s e-mail address, said Hercik.
According to a press release put out by Hall, the added feature came about as part of the county’s desire to make the information available as quickly as possible. She also said that the “vast majority” of residents are supportive of posting property information on the Internet.
“One resident from Oliver wrote, ‘I want to commend you for the excellent job done on re-evaluation of properties. When viewing your Web site and comparing properties, I certainly think I was given my fair share,” said Hall.
However, property owners who take advantage of informal meetings with CLT officials to discuss their assessments cannot yet get printouts of the five recent sales, or “comparables,” used to derive their new assessed values.
Although those sales will be shown to the property owner at the informal meeting, they are not being posted on the Web and the property owner cannot obtain photocopies of the comparables from CLT.
Hercik said that as of now, that information is the property of CLT, which is in the process of adjusting its preliminary figures during this phase of the revaluation project. He said that once that data is turned over to the county on or around July 1, it will all become public information and citizens can then get photocopies through his office.
“We’ll be able to print you out all that information – your five comparables, your property record card, your cost approach,” said Hercik. “Right now, it’s still there own company records. But once they’re turned over the county, they’ll be public records and we’ll print them all.”