The following article was taken directly from the Lewiston Tribune and highlights what the market appears to be doing in our community.
Most property values in Nez Perce County remain stable
By Sandra L. Lee of the Tribune
Saturday, May 2, 2009
East Main Street businesses, apartments and farm ground are seeing the greatest increases in property values this year, Nez Perce County Assessor Daniel J. Anderson said.
However, most property owners in the county won't see any dramatic changes - up or down - in the notices going out late this month, Anderson said.
"The majority of folks are going to see a level (value) or an actual decrease, a small decrease," Anderson said.
The exception is East Lewiston commercial property that will rocket up 29 percent after being unchanged the past five years. The assessor's office looks at a different part of the city or classification of businesses each year. Averaged, East Main has gone up about 5 percent a year, he said, but it's still a good value compared with other commercial areas.
For instance, the downtown area west of Lincoln Street last year averaged increases of 9 percent for land and 22 percent for improvements.
Based on past sales, values of $1.50 a square foot on East Main will go to about $1.93, or $2 up to $2.60, none of which are anywhere close to Thain Road or 21st Street values, he said.
Throughout the county, apartment values are going up an average of 13 percent and farm ground by 10 percent. Condominiums will increase an average of 2 percent to 3 percent.
The county is seeing the reverse of what happened when residential values were escalating wildly in parts of the nation, but seeing relatively modest increases here, Anderson said. Now, homeowners in some of those regions are finding their houses are worth less than they owe, but values here are either flat or within a percent or two up or down from last year's values.
Where there are increases in residential properties, it's likely to be a couple percent, up to about 7 percent for newer manufactured homes in courts and parks, Anderson said. Manufactured homes on their own lots, however, are flat or even down a bit.
The more moderately priced houses, up to about $150,000, will see about a 5 percent raise.
"A case could easily have been made that I could have raised almost all property 5 percent because last year 70 percent of the sales sold for more than we had just raised them to," he said
"I'm given latitude by the State Tax Commission to be within a range based on the actual sales that occur between 90 percent and 110 percent. We're statistically setting around 95 percent, and I have opted to take a wait-and-see attitude as far as what's going to happen with sales in 2009."
Anderson said a couple things are protecting the market here. One is the continued stability of employment at places like Clearwater Paper, ATK, Regence BlueShield, St. Joseph Regional Medical Center and Lewis-Clark State College. There also wasn't a large stock of houses built on speculation, such as existed in other locations, to drive down the market.
New housing starts are down somewhat, but haven't stopped completely.
In 2008, permits were issued inside Lewiston for 40 new residences and seven manufactured homes. Permits for 15 of those stick-built houses and one manufactured home were issued in the first four months of 2008, compared with 10 house permits and two manufactured homes in the same period this year, according to Sarah Redenbaugh, permit representative with the Community Development Department.
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Lee may be contacted at slee@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.
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