It’s that time of year again. Property tax bills are arriving in mailboxes across Virginia. And, as Michael Pope reports, the value of homes in Virginia is going up this year — although some more than others.
Richmond has the hottest real estate market of any metropolitan area in Virginia. Over the course of the last year, home values in the city grew 5.7 percent. Realtor Aaron Gilbert says the area doesn’t have enough supply to meet demand, which drives property values up.
“I can’t tell you how often, every day almost, that I have someone calling from the 757 Tidewater area or from Northern Virginia and they are looking for investment properties, properties to possibly flip to use historic tax credits in certain parts of the city,” says Gilbert.
On the other end of the spectrum is Danville. It’s seen the most sluggish growth over the last year, 2.4 percent. But Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell says things will turn around. She’s already seeing strong growth in Danville so far this year.
“We will take that momentum into consideration and home values will be up, we think, right around four percent a year from now simply because we are starting to see the ramp up in how fast home values are growing,” says Gudell.
All those rising property values are good news in the long run. But there’s short term pain. Higher property values means a higher property tax bill in your mailbox.