Most of you probably received your revised assessments in the mail by now and most of you are probably not too happy if you live in Charlottesville. In Charlottesville, housing assessments rose an average of 2.3% with neighborhoods such as Belmont, Page and Fifeville rising eight, nine and 18 percent, respectively.  Holy snickeys.

That sounds insane.  Doing a little researching, Jim Duncan has some clues as to why, in a declining housing market, the City can issue assessment increases.  He explains:

Assessment that is, by code, supposed to be 100% of market value – this is, and has been, with regards to true market value, irrelevant, as it is not a up-to-date as a market analysis reflecting current market value, as they are done once yearly. Up until last year, they were done, in Albemarle, every two years. Nelson does them every five, I believe…Government’s assessment is a take on fair market value, but is less accurate, in my opinion, as it is subjected to less critical analysis and not subject to the open market.

So, we’re going to use out of date metrics to increase taxes for people when we’re facing obvious housing deflation and job losses?  Sounds like someone is taking crazy pills.  Does this add more pain to our local economy?

Update from Ric Barrick via cvillenews:

Let me just make a few corrections here, outside of the water bill issue. The figures used in 29’s piece involved new construction. Why is that important? The average homeowner concerned about assessment should not be focussed on that number because it reflects total taxable property in that neighborhood. That includes any increase in assessment in existing property AND new property built since last year. If they heard the Channel 29 report they would assume property in Fifeville is going up 18%. The reality is that the assessed property from 2007 to 2008 in Fifeville went up 11% on average. Some property was assessed higher, some lower as it is an statistical average. Using 18% is misleading since it represents the increase in total property value in that neighborhood and most who heard that report would assume their house value and taxable assessment went up by that amount. I make this correction because we have been dealing with a lot of calls concerned after that report. I have asked for a correction to the original story which was teased as if you live in Charlottesville your tax bill will go up. Not true. Nearly 30 out of the 48 neighborhoods will average a flat assessment or a decrease. This is the second smallest increase in assessment in the City’s history. That should have been the story.

[via NBC29] [pic from JoeLogan]

Yes, another one bites the dust.  DP reports it will sell its main office building and property on West Rio Road.  The DP reports:

The Progress building, a former hardware store located at the corner of West Rio Road and Berkmar Drive in Albemarle County, and its land have a combined assessed value of about $4 million, according to county records.

Daily Progress Publisher Lawrence McConnell said the newspaper looks forward to finding an appropriate space for the news, advertising, circulation and business functions of the paper, which could result in staying in the current facility. The Progress has been in the Rio Road building since moving there from Market Street in downtown Charlottesville in 1983.

The sale of the building became more of an option after Media General decided to shut down the press on Rio Road and shift printing of The Daily Progress to a company plant in Hanover County and printing of the Waynesboro News Virginian to the company’s Lynchburg newspaper plant. Each had been printed in Charlottesville until July.

Can’t see we didn’t see that coming. Does this mean DP will start to give us exciting news? Its too early to tell. They really have nothing to lose at this point though.

[pic from herval on flickr]

Our birdies were spot on about Urban Outfitters leasing the old Hardware Store space.  We heard this rumor back in August of last year. We love the birdies WCAV confirms it after talking with a spokesperson.  There are no more details at this time. 

[pic from ncindc]

If you haven’t heard of the Bubble Blog, it’s the antithesis of the Charlottesville Real Estate Media machine.  The people who run it are anonymous from what I can tell.  As fellow Villains, we were immediately attracted to their mission “for bemusement purposes only, it’s a small contribution to the zeitgeist.” We discovered many things which are well worth the read.  Between real estate agent denial, BULLMONT, it NOT being a great time to buy for 99.9999% of the population, I am very excited to share this amazing interview with you.

We put on the masks and met in a secret lair. I cannot tell you details about the Bubble people behind the mask, but I can share with you the responses which may outsnark some of our very own Villains.  The questions are below:

1. When the Charlottesville housing bubble bursts, will we be wet, slimy or greasy?
2. Why do realtors lie about housing in Charlottesville being HOT right now? In my neighborhood, prices have come down over 15%. How is that hot?
3.  When our homes fall into the giant hole in the economy, what are your survival tips? How many guns do you own?
4.  Are you smarter than Jim Duncan? Are you Jim Duncan’s Nemesis
5. What’s the most ridiculously priced house and/or neighborhood in Charlottesville right now? What’s the best deal?
6. Anything else you want to say to our readers?

Get ready for the responses, this one is a doozy.
»Read More

Witty graffiti always has a strong place in Scowly’s heart.

Seen outside Main Street Market for the old Milano place.  Kabbashtastic.

I was thinking about a poll that was once conducted on this site about how many cVillain readers actually live downtown (which I cannot find in the archives for the life of me). The results showed that most of this site’s readers don’t actually live downtown, which is the scene that this blog revolves around. Now I will tell you that when I moved to Charlottesville, I knew nothing about this city and not a soul that lived inside it. I looked at a lot of different apartments in a lot of different locations, but as soon as I saw the downtown area, I fell in love.

What’s not to love about living downtown? The mall is social epicenter of this wonderful city, and it exudes a unique and dignified air with its countless number of fantastic food and drink options. Not only that, but I could get as drunk as I wanted and never had to call a cab (which is apparently iffy in this town). I felt like I was part of some hip and trendy crowd that always knew what the new black was. Whenever I had friends over, they all agreed how cool it was to be living in downtown Charlottesville.

After spending almost a year living downtown, however, I have noticed a few drawbacks to my seemingly perfect existence:

»Read More

I know all of you must be going into post-lunch food coma mode, but here is just one more morsel to chew on before you stop pretending to actually be working…It seems an article the C-Ville wrote about a local neighborhood pissed off some residents. One of them sent a letter to the editor, and for some strange reason I think the only place anyone will read it is on cVillain, so, without further ado:

»Read More

Maybe Charlottesville Real Estate is Hurting more than we think.  Jim has a great post on the statistics of our housing market.

News? We have over a full year of inventory of houses on the market.  Bring out your cash books in a few months if you have any money right now.  This looks pretty nasty.

[Read the full story at RealCentralVA.com]

Jim sends us a link that explains CVS is coming to the corner.  We failed to highlight this rumor which actually hit our site on Feb 26.  DaveO explains:

The owner of the building is Terry from College Inn who owns much of 2 blocks on the corner including the Plan 9 & Higher Grounds coffee space, Just Curry, and the Satellite Ballroom. All of these businesses will be affected and will close, probably this summer, to be replaced by….. CVS Pharmacy. This is not a rumor, this is a fact. It’s probably too late to voice any objection because the CVS lease has in all likelihood already been signed.

I should make stuff like this its own post!

Despite the national housing crisis, Charlottesville has a slightly lower foreclosure rate than the national average.

The Daily Progress reports:

Less than 1/2 of 1 percent of Charlottesville area homeowners were either in foreclosure or more than 60 days behind payments on a subprime loan, according to October statistics compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond….“It’s fair to say that the Charlottesville area does not have a subprime mortgage crisis, at least not at this point,” said Phil d’Oronzio, principal of Pilot Mortgage.

Jim Duncan asks:

I’d love to see the sources of all of these conclusions. For example – how is the “Charlottesville region” defined – which localities are included?

Well, Jim my Nordic powers lead me to no data source, either. I did find this a table on page 34 of the regional 2007 third quarter snapshot that explains Virginia has slightly lower (4.41%) mortgage delinquencies when compared to a national average (5.81%).  Additionally, Virginia subprime mortgage delinquencies (15.77%) are slightly lower than the national average (16.68%).  I do wonder where the Daily Progress sourced their information, because I couldn’t find it.

Does anyone know?