Sep. 24--At their Monday evening board meeting, the Haywood County commissioners approved a 20-month $211,500 contract with RS&M Appraisal Services, Inc. to help prepare the documents by which all real property within the county will be reappraised.

The county is tentatively planning for that to happen in 2011, a year later than was originally scheduled. The last revaluation was done in 2006.

The contract help is necessary, said Haywood County Tax Collector David Francis, to have an accurate schedule of values by which to make fair comparisons and to help break the 50,000 parcels of property in the county into like neighborhoods of similar value.

When property is valued across a wide area, there is danger of an expensive new home further up a mountain, for instance, artificially inflating the value of a more modest home built years before at the base. By breaking the county into numerous neighborhoods, Francis explained, a more accurate value can be assigned to both homes than if a larger community model were applied.

"So this would help the guy who had a smaller home from having values affected by the higher one," said Commissioner Skeeter Curtis.

Francis said it would.

While many believe property values went down after the bottom fell out of the national housing market, Francis presented market figures showing that was not and is not the case in Haywood. By collecting the sales prices of each property sold in the county and then comparing the sale price to the assessed value, there has not been a single month in which the sales prices were lower than the tax value. Overall in 2009, housing sale prices are an average of 12 percent above the values assigned to property three years ago. Francis said the statistics exclude commercial transactions as well as foreclosures, which don't fit the required definition of the sales price agreed to between a willing buyer and a willing seller.

"So what you do each month is add up sales prices of every property sold, then add up the tax value," said Commissioner Kevin Ensley. "This is not guesstimates. It is actual sales and actual values."

Commissioner Mark Swanger called the conclusion "simple arithmetic."

Francis confirmed the statements.

"I'm not saying there are no sales beneath the current value, but there have been more sales that are above," he explained.

Many in the community believe market values have dropped markedly and have called on the commissioners to lower tax values.

Lynda Bennett, a Maggie Valley real estate agent, was of that opinion when she spoke during the public comment session before the presentation.