A year after the Louisiana Tax Commission suggested the East Baton Rouge Parish Assessor take another look at the assessments of nearly a dozen commercial properties that appeared to be undervalued on the 2017 tax rolls, little has changed.
A review of the preliminary 2019 tax rolls shows that of the 11 properties an independent appraiser reviewed for the commission in 2018, five have the same assessments as they did in 2017, while the assessments on four have actually gone down and two have gone up.
Tax Commission Chairman Lawrence Chehardy says it’s too soon to say whether the assessments are potentially problematic because the 2019 tax rolls are still preliminary and will not be finalized until the end of the year.
East Baton Rouge Parish Assessor Brian Wilson, meanwhile, says he cannot speak to the assessments of individual properties but that all properties in the parish will be reassessed in 2020, which, by law, is a reassessment year.
The Tax Commission undertook the review in August 2018, following a Business Report story detailing how some of the most expensive commercial properties in the parish are assessed significantly below their most recently recorded sale price, resulting in a potential loss of millions of dollars to the cash-strapped parish government.
The review did not find a pattern of underassessment by Wilson’s office. However, it did find that the commission’s values came in higher on the whole than the assessor’s and it referred the findings back to Wilson for further review and possible action.
Some of the most expensive properties on the list, however, have the same assessment as they did two years ago. The University Edge apartment complex at 650 W. McKinley St., for instance, which sold in 2015 for $32.5 million, was assessed in 2017 at $1.25 million, meaning its implied market value was just $12.5 million—a valuation that remains unchanged on the 2019 rolls.
Similarly, the University House complex at 740 W. Chimes St., which last sold for $108.5 million in 2015, was assessed at $3.3 million in 2017, giving it an implied market value of some $33 million which, again, did not change in 2019.
Some multifamily complexes saw their assessments go down this year. Highland Plantation’s assessment fell slightly from $1.5 million to $984,650, while The Villas at Stone Creek’s assessment went from $1.25 million to $1 million.
Among the properties that were assessed at a higher rate in 2019 was the Acadian Village Shopping Center, which is anchored by the popular Trader Joe’s and last sold for more than $32 million. Its assessment rose from $1.68 million to some $2.7 million.
Wilson has defended the way his office values—and, consequently—assesses properties, and has said some recent sale prices are so atypical for this market they cannot be used as a basis for assessments.
But he suggests after the 2020 reassessment things might change.
“We’re going to look at all the numbers and redo everything,” he says.
