Shores Home Values to Drop Uniformly

The residential properties of Grosse Pointe Shores will dip in value by 7.9 percent across the counties it straddles, said Philip Mastin, Director of Assessment and Equalization for Wayne County.

Original values had been determined separately for homes in the Macomb County portion from the homes in the Wayne County portion, in which the decrease in value ranged from 12.7 percent to 5.5 percent. The seven percent difference riled residents, who attended a city council meeting in mid-February to hear Mastin speak about the process of reaching such figures. 

Each county had compiled a list of home sales for the eligible period, which is Oct. 1 through Sept 30, 2010. The lists had different sales included, which is what led to the variation in evaluation, Mastin said. 

Originally Wayne County had a list of 17 homes while Macomb County had 30 homes. Eventually, with the help of Shores Assessor Tim O'Donnell, the counties aligned their lists to work from the same set of property sales, Mastin said. 

Among the differences, Macomb originally used four sales that were outside of the eligible period and Macomb had a few more sales within the proper time frame Wayne county didn't, and vice versa, Mastin said. 

Ultimately the counties used a list of 21 sales that occurred between Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, giving both counties a better, uniform ratio for the Shores, Mastin said. 

Although there are other communities that fall on county lines, the Shores is unique in that only 47 properties reside within Macomb County, which is a very small number, Mastin said. If for example, only one home sold during an eligible period, it would be difficult to increase or decrease all properties based on only one sale, he said. 

The other communities, such as Northville, are more equal in their division between counties, which means home sales have an equal chance of happening on either side, Mastin explained. Within Northville, residents are giving their taxable values by county, he said. 

Historically, residents of the Shores have received one across the board value increase/decrease as Macomb County has simply used the ratio determined by Wayne County since most of the properties are in Wayne County, said Steve Mellen, Macomb County Assessment and Equalization director. 

Macomb County completes their assessment and valuation process much earlier than Wayne, likely in part because Wayne has so many more communities, and this year Macomb was trying to include the Shores in their finished product, Mellen said. They asked O'Donnell to provide a list of homes to be included for the process but didn't realize the snafu until Wayne County called inquiring about the difference, Mellen said. 

In the future, Macomb County plans to wait to publish its figures related to the Shores until after Wayne County has completed their numbers to avoid having any repeat of this year, Mellen said. 

Mastin told residents during the meeting and reiterated Thursday that in the future a joint effort will be made between the two counties from now on in determining the taxable values of the homes in the Shores to avoid similar problems in the future.

The dip in value is shorting the Shores of approximately $320,000 in revenue—a similar situation to all of the other Pointes and most communities throughout Michigan.