04/09/2007 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Anoka County City of LinoLakes Sales Studies According to State Law, it is the assessor's job to appraise all real property at market value for property tax purposes. As a method of checks and balances, the Department of Revenue uses statistics and ratios relating to assessed market value and current sale prices to confirm that the law is upheld. Assessors use similar statistics and sales ratios to identify market trends in developing market values. A sales ratio is obtained by comparing the assessor's market value to the adjusted sales price of each property sold in an arms - length transaction within a fixed period. An "arms- length" transaction is one that is generated after a property has had sufficient time on the open market, between both an informed buyer and seller with no undue pressure on either party. The median or mid -point ratios are calculated and stratified by property classification. 100% The only perfect assessment would have a 100% ratio for every sale. This is of course, impossible. Because we are not able to predict major events that may cause significant shifts in the market, the state allows a 15% margin of error. The Department of Revenue adjusts the median ratio by the percentage of growth from the previous year's abstract value of the same class of property within the same jurisdiction. This adjusted median ratio must fall between 90% and 105 %. Any deviation will warrant a state mandated jurisdiction -wide adjustment of at least 5 %. To avoid this increase, the Anoka County Assessor requests a median sales ratio of 94.5 %. In Anoka County, we have the ability to stratify the ratios by style, age, quality of construction, size, land zone and value. This assists us in appraising all of our properties closer to our goal ratio. Sales Statistics Defined In addition to the median ratio, we have the ability to develop other statistics to test the accuracy of the assessment. Some of these are used at the state and county level also. The primary statistics used are: 14