Chicken Connection?
One of our reader’s commented here the other day and we would love to expand on it. A.V. said….
“We added an “old” chicken coop (instead of buying new or building a new one, doesn’t even have a concrete pad underneath) and they assessed it at $1520 and raised our taxes $4K.”
What does that have to do with Cabela’s court case you may ask? In the law, it has a lot to do with it and we hope we can shine some light on this.
In the recent case where the State of Nebraska reversed the findings of Cheyenne County. Melody Keller argued that the covered walkway and patio on the Cabela’s property added market value and it was appraised at $121,920. The assessor for Cabela’s argued that the walkway only has value if both buildings could be sold at the same time to the same company which just isn’t going to happen under current conditions in Sidney. Anyone who buys one building is not going to want it connected to another and will have to remove it. So until BOTH buildings are sold at the same time to the same company it has no value which is almost impossible right now, so it has no market value. The State of Nebraska found flaws in Melody Keller’s assessment of the value and found in favor of Cabela’s.
Now to the chicken coop. Does the addition of a chicken coop add market value to your home? That is the question. It is also questionable that it adds $4,000 in value. Most residents in Cheyenne don’t own chickens and chickens aren’t even allowed in the city of Sidney by ordinance. So does a chicken coop truly add value? This would depend on the buyer. We love chickens but can’t have them because we live in the city.
It seems that many assessments we are finding are done completely on cost and not on market value. Market value it appears is only used when it is determined that it could raise the tax higher. This is a question we raised when we questioned Melody Keller in her office on July 6th. She told us she values replacement cost and not market value. We will post more in-depth on this subject in a future post.
As we read through some of the cases and assessments done in the last few years we are finding examples where tax assessments are raised even though the construction may not have added market value to the property. For the health of Cheyenne County residents, especially during these economic times, we believe that any doubt should err on the side of the residents and not on the tax increase. That is fair taxation. We are not finding this to be the case however as we dig deeper into the cases from the past couple of years. The research will continue……