I’m a big fan of the new breed of Web based real estate tracking sites like Zillow.com, Redfin.com and the like. They’re incredibly powerful tools for studying home values, researching towns and so on. The amount of information they consolidate — maps, demographics, public data on home sales and appraisals is amazing. That’s why I was intrigued when I got an email from Zillow noting that home values in Belmont have decreased 5.6% in the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter in 2007. That’s hardly good news — but it could be worse. Single family home values nationally were down 7.5% in the same period. Condo values were down 9 percent, Zillow claims. There’s a link to their report (which isn’t just on Belmont) here.
Now Zillow.com trying to get people to visit their Web page is one thing, but the Zillow news jives with a recent conversation my wife had with one of the town’s assessors. He had come to our house to check out a bathroom renovation we’re doing. Despite the improvement, he said the assessed value of our house was likely going down in 2008, not up. It had dipped last year (unbeknownst to me) but he said the drop would be even bigger this year, given the state of the housing market.
On the one hand, this is good — I get to enjoy a renovated bathroom without worrying about the tax hit. On the other hand, it makes me worry that the town’s estimated $4.5m budget shortfall in FY 10 could end up being wishful thinking, especially if there are widespread reductions in property tax assessments — the town’s single biggest source of revenue.