Media Inquiries

The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP) values the assistance of news media to help tell the mixed income, affordable housing story. Our revamped web site should answer many of your questions. For more details, or to speak to an ANDP representative, please see contact information below.

George S. Burgan
Senior Manager of Marketing & Communications
(404) 420-1583 - Direct
(678) 358-4427 - Cell
gburgan@andpi.org
 

In The News

AJC Exclusive
Property owners were overcharged
Areas with most foreclosures overpaid even more
By Michelle E. Shaw

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4:39 a.m. Thursday, February 18, 2010

Briana Henry-Frisby and Rae Anne Harkness both own homes in DeKalb County, and both suspect they’re paying too much in property taxes. The fact that both work in the DeKalb tax commissioner’s office doesn’t actually help.

“Now is not the time to leave any money laying on the table, or anywhere,” Henry-Frisby said.

But she may well be leaving behind a tidy pile of cash when it comes to property taxes.

A report to be released today concludes that property owners in the five core metro Atlanta counties overpaid their property taxes by an average of $244 in 2009. And people who live in areas hard hit by foreclosures, as do Henry-Frisby and Harkness, overpaid by even more, says an analysis commissioned by the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership.

AJC findings confirmed

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December reported that tens of thousands of homes across metro Atlanta were overvalued last year by county tax assessors, who didn’t adjust values sufficiently after the historic real estate collapse. Homeowners, the newspaper reported, were being taxed on values their property no longer held. The report today tends to confirm the AJC’s findings and also, for the first time, calculates an average overpayment.

John O’Callaghan, ANDP president, said the report focuses on property tax values from 2009 for neighborhoods with the highest foreclosure rates in metro Atlanta.

“What this does is give a picture of the average homeowner,” he said. “Some are underpaying and others are overpaying by a larger margin. We hope this data and research will lead to changes in the system.”

Calvin Hicks, chief assessor in DeKalb County, balks at the idea that people have “overpaid” taxes.

“County services still cost what they cost,” Hicks said. “So maybe it is that property [valuations] should have gone down, but the millage rate should have gone up. That still may have equaled the same amount of tax money, but coming from different directions.”

Hicks said foreclosures affect neighborhood values in different ways and said county officials are working on the best way to reflect those properties in future valuations.

ANDP’s report, prepared by Robert Charles Lesser & Co., breaks out the three ZIP codes with the most foreclosures in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties and the average amount homeowners overpaid their taxes for 2009.

The study took sales values from the second half of 2008 and contrasted those numbers to the value the county set on the same property.

Analysts then calculated what the tax assessment would have been based on sales figures, compared to actual assessments on the same properties.

Ammo for appeals?

In the 15 ZIP codes with the most foreclosures, the average overpayment for 2009 was $491, the report says. Here are the ZIPs and the total estimated overpayment in each:

● Clayton: 30238, 30274 and 30296, $17 million overpayment.

● Cobb: 30168, 30127, and 30126, $8 million overpayment.

● DeKalb: 30038, 30058 and 30032, $16 million overpayment.

● Fulton: 30310, 30315 and 30331, $24 million overpayment.

● Gwinnett: 30039, 30045 and 30044, $17 million overpayment.

In DeKalb’s 30058, Henry-Frisby’s ZIP code, the average overpayment in 2009 was $391.

“There is a lot I can do with that money,” she said.

Harkness said she doesn’t have much hope of getting back the $513 ANDP’s report says was the average overpayment in her ZIP, 30032.

“But it is good to know, and it gives me something else to work with when I appeal this year,” she said.

Both said that working in the tax commissioner’s office does them no good when it comes to their own tax valuations.

“No, I only work for the county,” Henry-Frisby said. “When it comes to my house and things outside of the office, I’m in the same boat as everybody else. I’ve got to call the same people they do and I’ve got to wait for them to call me back, too.”

Said Harkness: “The only advantage I can think of is I know how the system works and who to call, but that doesn’t help change my situation at all.”

Charles Bowman, a DeKalb teacher who lives in Gwinnett’s 30039 ZIP code, said he wasn’t surprised to hear homeowners in his area overpaid by an average of $503 last year.

“This information makes me feel more inclined to act and appeal my assessment than before,” he said of the report. “That money, had we gotten a refund from our escrow account, could have been used to do some badly needed repair on our home.”

Bowman, who has two children with his wife, Tamiko, said that money could have gone to a number of other things, including his Ph.D. studies.

“I think everyone everywhere is trying to be smart about how and when they spend money,” he said. “And right now it just hurts to think there may have been some money that could have been used differently, if we’d had the chance.”

To review today’s report, 
visit www.andpi.org.

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ANDP selected as national finalist
NHC announces 2009 Pioneer Housing Strategies award
Washington, DC (December 15, 2009) – The National Housing Conference (NHC) announced today that Builders of Hope, Inc. (BOH) was honored with the 2009 NHC "Pioneering Housing Strategies" Award for helping to close an expanding gap between the availability and the need for safe, affordable and environmentally-friendly urban housing solutions in the Raleigh, NC area.

About the Award - Established this year, the "Pioneering Housing Strategies" Award was developed to replace the NHC "Excellence in Housing Communications" Award in order to recognize a broader range of creative activities. The honor acknowledges pioneering, forward-thinking strategies that are changing the way we approach affordable housing and community development initiatives.

Award finalists included the Atlanta Housing Authority, Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Bank of America, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., Fairfax County Department of Housing and Community Development, Mercy Housing Chicago, Mercy Housing Idaho, Metropolitan Planning Council, NeighborWorks® America, Ohio Finance Housing Agency, Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc., San Diego Housing Commission, and Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future. MORE

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Broken tax system hurts the poor
GUEST COLUMN
By John O’Callaghan
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published Sunday, December 13, 2009

John O’Callaghan is president and CEO of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership.

(December 2009) Georgia’s property tax system is broken and homeowners in our most vulnerable neighborhoods are paying the greatest price. The AJC’s “Property Tax Meltdown” series highlights the need to reform systemic flaws that grossly overtax low-income and high-foreclosure neighborhoods and often undertax more stable affluent neighborhoods and commercial properties.

Fairness and due process form the foundation of a trusting relationship between a government and its people. But metro assessment practices have essentially violated that trust by overbilling low-income residents living in high-foreclosure neighborhoods by up to triple their fair share of property taxes.

Georgia law is pretty simple. Local assessors must set values at a price that a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller. In a competitive marketplace that value is the sales price at the time of purchase. Until very recently, it was a standard practice for assessors to exclude sales of foreclosed homes from their valuation formulas. In 2008, thanks to a change in state law, assessors can no longer legally ignore the devastating impact of foreclosures on our neighborhoods.

Across the five largest metro counties, low-income residents of high-foreclosure neighborhoods suffer the most from flawed assessments and the resulting tax burden. During the late 1990s, these neighborhoods were the victims of mortgage fraud, flipping and predatory lending. As a result, they have been overassessed for nearly a decade.

By contrast, owners of higher-end homes would often contest their tax assessments because their neighbor was paying less. Few have argued that they couldn’t sell their house for the assessed value. This bears out in the AJC’s research — in Atlanta’s most stable ZIP codes, assessed values are still only 84 to 88 percent of demonstrated market sales, despite the depressed market. This was especially true with commercial properties. Fulton County’s commercial digest was grossly undervalued. Until last year, Fulton’s commercial properties had not received a complete revaluation since 1991.

Property tax values in low-income, minority neighborhoods were already inflated prior to the onset of the foreclosure crisis. Now, these homeowners are living in the neighborhoods most ravaged by foreclosure. According to the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership’s research, at the end of 2008 homes selling in southwest Atlanta’s Pittsburgh neighborhood were selling for a fraction (on average 20 percent) of the county’s assessed value. Fulton recently made a 27 percent average adjustment, but these residents are still paying $1,300 more in taxes annually than they should.

The crisis is affecting homeowners and renters alike in our most damaged neighborhoods. Nonprofit affordable apartment communities are being assessed at up to three times market appraisal values. The increase in rent to cover the higher tax bill is squeezing residents, many of whom are low-wage earners.

AJC’s research shows a similar story. Atlanta’s 30310 is the region’s most overassessed. It has a foreclosure rate of 8.5 percent, average annual income of under $28,000 and minority population of 96 percent. The stories are similar for low-income neighborhoods along Atlanta’s southern crescent from Atlanta and south Fulton to Clayton and south DeKalb.

Providing tax equity is critical to stabilizing our most vulnerable neighborhoods. Some governments waive local property taxes in empowerment zones, which attract new homeowners and investors to disadvantaged neighborhoods. Metro Atlanta is currently pursuing a strategy of disempowerment. We are driving out residents and investment by doubling taxes in struggling neighborhoods.

Acknowledging critical local government revenue shortfalls, some seem to argue that counties should ignore state law by not assessing homes for what they are actually worth. We should not ask any taxpayer to pay more than their fair share just because deficits are looming. The tax assessor’s job is to set fair values across the digest. After a level playing field is set, local government officials must determine the millage rate required to meet critical local needs.
If assessments are not adjusted to market levels in our most vulnerable neighborhoods, our region will pay the ultimate price in vacant and abandoned homes, blighted, crumbling communities, increased crime, and a deteriorating tax base.

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Assessment systems overwhelmed
By Dan Immergluck For the AJC
December 13, 2009

Dan Immergluck is an associate professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech, where he teaches graduate courses in real estate, housing policy and research methods.


(December 2009) The tax assessment challenges portrayed in the AJC this week are affecting localities across the country. The housing market boom and bust has stressed property tax assessment systems, which were not designed for dealing with such volatility.

While the AJC series focuses on recent declines in market values, most property tax systems also have not dealt well with rapid increases in value. Where values rose rapidly during the boom, tax values were often much lower than current market values. Of course this problem drew little homeowner ire and few headlines. Over time, overvaluations by assessors will, on average, be at least partly offset by undervaluations, but “on average” doesn’t help the homeowner who may not have benefitted on the upside but is paying on the downside.

Many of these sorts of problems stem from an unrealistic goal. It is generally not feasible for assessors’ appraisal systems to attain very high levels of accuracy on all properties every year. Accuracy might be improved somewhat, but a high degree of “idiosyncratic” error will persist. And this sort of error will increase with market volatility.

Policymakers should focus more on reducing systemic biases in the system that harm certain groups or neighborhoods, especially those with modest incomes. As an example, when property flipping and appraisal fraud were rampant in some low-income Atlanta neighborhoods during the 2003 to 2006 period, many homes were bought and quickly resold by investors for very large gains.

Many of these sales were inflated well beyond any reasonable value, and they fed higher assessments on neighboring properties, including many owned by modest-income owner-occupants.

Ironically, these neighborhoods are some of the same ones where foreclosures have been greatest, real values have fallen the most precipitously, and assessed values exceed current market values by the greatest amounts.

Notwithstanding some real problems in the current systems, I recommend those proposing any changes proceed cautiously. Many hasty revisions of tax structures that have been born out of supposed taxpayer “revolts” have backfired. Statewide laws that limit assessments as long as a homeowner owns a home (but that reassesses upon sale) have caused large disparities in tax bills among homeowners with similar houses and similar incomes in the same neighborhoods. Any moves to shift to other forms of taxation should recognize the volatility in those revenue streams and the potentially greater burden that they may impose on modest income households.

More judicious proposals include state rebates or refundable income tax credits for homeowners and renters with modest incomes that at least partly compensate for property taxes that exceed a certain percentage of their income. (Renters pay property taxes as well; taxes are passed on through their monthly rent.)

As of 2007, nine states and the District of Columbia had such programs. These cushion the blow for those who need relief the most and provide an efficient, targeted approach to tax reform.

Most property tax assessment systems have not dealt well with rapid increases or decreases in value, said Dan Immergluck, an associate professor at Georgia Tech. Jason Getz jgetz@ajc.com  

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Media Releases

ANDP Releases 3rd Property Tax Assessment Report
Metro Atlanta Homeowners Overpaid 2009 Property Taxes by More Than $200 Million; Poor, High-Foreclosure Neighborhoods Overtaxed at a Rate Twice Metro Average
New Report Update: Despite efforts by assessors to lower property tax values from 2008 to 2009, Atlanta’s highest- foreclosure neighborhoods overpaid their taxes last year by $82.2 Million

(Atlanta, GA) Low-income homeowners living in neighborhoods devastated by the foreclosure crisis overpaid their property taxes last year by an average of nearly $500 per household, according to a new report released today by ANDP. The report – third in an ongoing series with Robert Charles Lesser & Company on property tax inequity in Metro Atlanta – reveals that residents of the highest foreclosure communities overpaid their taxes by more than double the average metro-wide overpayment of $244 per household. Full Press Release  Full Report

Board of Directors
ANDP announces new Chair, Vice Chair and members
January 27, 2010 (Atlanta, Georgia) — The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. is pleased to announce that Pam Sessions of Hedgewood Properties has been named Chair of the Board of Directors and Reggie Fenn of Bank of America has been named Vice-Chair. ANDP also announces the addition of two new board members – Bill Bolen of Homrich Berg and Sarah Kirsch of RCLCO.  MORE

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Four Organizations Team Up to Help Revitalize Southwest Atlanta
Local Revitalization Groups Get Support from Bank, Its Volunteers and Rebuilding Together
(November 2009) – Hope that the private sector would augment federal and local efforts to revitalize neighborhoods damaged by foreclosures is materializing in Southwest Atlanta. Two major non-profits awarded federal dollars to acquire, rehab and fill foreclosures with new homeowners are teaming with a well-known bank. The bank is providing funding and volunteers and bringing in an additional non-profit that will rehab homes of elderly homeowners in the area.

The first tangible sign of this joint effort will be seen on Nov. 14 at a Southwest Atlanta home at 510 Muse St. SW, when Rebuilding Together Atlanta, along with volunteers from Wachovia, A Wells Fargo Company, will repair the residence of Mrs. Emma Davis – the first of six homes to be repaired in the neighborhood.

Others involved in the collaboration are the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc., and Resources for Residents and Communities. ANDP received $1 million through the National Stabilization Program and RRC received $1.2 million. Each group has been assigned neighboring communities in Southwest Atlanta and is now in the process of identifying homes to acquire, rehab and fill with homeowners. MORE

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ANDP welcomes Christie Cade

ANDP announces the addition of Christie Cade to its housing development department. With more than two decades of experience in production, asset management, loan origination, and program compliance in both public and private sectors, Cade brings a wealth of knowledge to ANDP.  MORE

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Residents of High-Foreclosure Neighborhoods Could Pay Millions in Excess Property Taxes

(October 2008)  Homeowners in the 15 metro zip codes hardest hit by foreclosures will pay more than $71 million in excess property taxes next year if dramatic reassessments are not made, according to a new study released today by ANDP.  MORE

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