There is just over a week remaining to appeal your commercial Cobb County property tax assessments. The Cobb County property tax assessors took the first opportunity to increase values in several years to heart and jacked up a lot of commercial values. I have filed appeals on commercial values that have increases as high as 115%!

Most commercial property owners will say that we are still in recession, but not the Cobb County property tax assessors. I have clients that are teetering on the edge of insolvency but everything is looking up at 736 Whitlock Avenue! Maybe they haven't noticed that vacancy rates haven't improved. Maybe they haven't heard that tenants can still demand lower rent payments on the legitimate threat of moving to a lower cost building.

The Cobb County Tax assessment notices were mailed on Friday, April 20 with an appeal deadline of June 4, 2012. My first phone calls were from commercial property owners that had large increases in assessed values. I was told by the County that the values are based on a new revaluation by the Cobb County tax assessment office. They said that they haven't had a revaluation since 2008 because the Georgia General Assembly placed a three year moratorium on assessment increases.

A commercial appraiser from the Cobb County tax assessment office told me that approximately 3,000 commercial properties received an increase in assessment, 8,000 received a decrease in assessment, and the remainder were unchanged. Some of these assessment increases will end up in court because the Cobb County Board of Equalization (BOE) rendered values on these properties last year, and according to Georgia Code 48-5-299C these values should be frozen for two additional years. However, the code does seem to give the assessors a way to change the values: