Chris Johnson says: After all, the esitmated or appraised values of ALLOne might validly claim I "mixed" these numbers in my posting in a way that some readers might misunderstand, but there is absolutely zero confusion on my part as to the difference. However, the publicly available, tax assessor's office-generated appraisal is useless for any government-owned property. Most of the time it is blank/missing or listed as zero ($0.00), because of course, the government doesn't pay itself property taxes. The result is that these numbers are essentially non-public data, if they even exist. The assessor's office isn't filled with fools: either they don't bother appraising these properties since they won't be paying tax anyway, or if they do, one can bet the numbers are reasonably accurate. They have, after all, a lot of experience with calculating the value of real estate since that's what they do, year in and year out.
PRIVATE property, made by "personnel of the state, its agencies and
departments, or a political subdivision [counties and their tax assessors]" is PUBLIC information
in all counties. I regularly look up the governmentally appraised value
of PRIVATE real estate via various county records.
Brandt here: Chris is correct that the estimated market value for property is public and is commonly available on the Web. But he's mixing up that judgment by the assessor, and a specific appraisal made when the government sells land. That's the one that's private under certain circumstances.
Sure, there's some lag. But even a number a year or two old will give us an idea of the ballpark we are looking at.Why are these figures different? First, the web site estimated market value typically is old. Hennepin County currently lists on the web the estimated market value as January 1, 2002, although a phone call to the assessor would give the Jan. 1, 203 estimate. Second, my reporting experience has been that the assessor typically lags the market, at least for homes. whether it's rising or falling.
The properties on the southwest corner of the Sears site do have some county values on them: the corner-most lot is $286,200, the L-shape surrounding it is $502,500 (these 2 being taxpaying properties owned by Chicago-Lake LLC c/o Peter Boosalis, totalling about 1 acre in size), the next parcel surrounding in an incomplete-L shape is $169,000 (owned by David Johnson) and appears to be nothing but parking lots, and lastly, a large L-shaped contiguous piece which surrounds all of the foregoing owned by the MCDA is valued at $755,400, for which the county records actually claim it (oddly enough) paid tax, though the next adjoining MCDA-owned parcel paid zero tax and has no value listed.
Or in other words, the parking lots paid tax, and property upon which the actual Sears building sits did not. The parking lot piece is about 3 acres, the building piece is about 4 acres.
Some back of the envelope estimating says that the land under the building on the south parcel ALONE is worth nearly $2 million. Why then would the city give that land, the building (worth something, but how much?) and the parking lot land to Ryan for a mere $2 million when it's obviously worth at least double that or more? And worse, then pay Ryan $8 million to develop it?
I'm well aware of how that happens, too. It's not the assessor's office is incompetent. Beyond a small time delay in re-appraising properties when they've appreciated like a rocket launch the past few years, the state laws prevent them from moving your appraised value up towards what it is really worth on the market more than a fixed percentage per year (either 8% or 12%, but I can't recall at the moment, and getting the exact figure it irrelevant).To illustrate the difference between EMV and an appraisal, the estimated market value on the web for my house is more than $100,000 below a private appraisal done recently for refinancing purposes. And banks aren't prone to inflating appraisals, given that they lose if they have to take an inflated property back as collateral.
The county EMV is at various points in time, as close to the real value as any appraisal. The county appraisers use the same guidelines and techniques private appraisers use.
Regardless of all that, the point is that neither the EMV or the appraised value of public property is available for public consumption, but the EMV of private property is.
This "privacy" law clause is just one more in a bunch of roadblocks thrown in front of taxypayers who want to know how their tax money is being spent. Is this one an intentional effort to dissuade and confuse taxpayers? Maybe, maybe not. But some of rules and laws certainly are.
This just goes back to the problems at the MCDA over the past 20+ years. The corruption there is a mile wide and mile deep. The history of conflict of interest, deception, self-dealing, favoritism, and quid pro quo is long, sordid and extensive. Thanks to that, Minneapolis tax payers and Minnesota tax payers as well, through LGA and other fund movements, are on the hook for tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars of bad debt, bogus under-priced bonds and so forth, while a few developers and their revolving doors of "friends" make huge profits.
Every taxpayer should be incensed. Some are, and it's one of the reasons that Minneapolis is getting the shaft from the state. It's things like this that are a reason the Green and Independent parties are making in-roads, and why Jesse Ventura got elected. Some taxpayers have had enough of the unending corruption and unethical behavior of Republican and DFL politicians. It's time those parties clean house. It's time this city clean house, starting at the MCDA. It's time that citizens hold the council members' feet to the fire. No more business as usual.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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