When the Atlanta GA tax assessors determine the value of your office building for property tax purposes, their decisions are largely based on the specifics of your building and on the state of the market. Usually, their estimate of your property's value assumes that its value moves in the same direction as the greater Atlanta market. With this in mind, the key to managing your property assessment is to understand the broader market. That way, you can better gauge how your property's performance compares.

Recently much news has been made about the increasing house values around the country. Apparently the depths of the Great Recession are behind us and real estate is in full recovery mode. According to the Case-Shiller Atlanta home price index, housing values increased 18.44% year-over-year as of August 2013.

This is, of course, an average increase in house values for Atlanta real estate as a whole. I have found wide disparities from this average as I analyze values by neighborhood throughout the metro area. If we dig into the Case-Shiller Atlanta home price index a little further we can see where some of the variation is coming from.

The Georgia tax assessors are sending out 2013 tax assessment notices and it is time to take a look at Atlanta commercial real estate values. Below is the sale price per square foot trend for retail real estate in metro Atlanta. It appears we are still bouncing along the bottom: