Some homeowners in your neighborhood are new millionaires. You may be one of them.
The news of your good fortune may have come in one of the thousands of government letters sent to local addresses in the last two weeks.
These are the official notices of property value updates from the office of Warren County Assessor Beth Martin. Tennessee state law mandates that the one-page letters go out to property owners in the first two weeks of May.
“You may have become a millionaire and didn’t know it,” Martin’s chief deputy, Darren Pack, announced in an interview recording for McMinnville Public Radio 91.3 WCPI.
“If your house was [previously assessed at] $500,000 and it doubled to a million, you just became a millionaire. “It’s your lucky day.”
Most of the periodic re-appraisals increased the apparent value of properties—land, houses, garages, farms.
Across Warren County, the total of all properties increased dramatically since the last mass appraisal, which is required under state law on a four, five or six-year cycle depending on the choice of the county commission. Locally, values are updated every five years.
Inflation in land value and the cost of building impact the apparent value. For official appraisal and property tax purposes, the assessed value should closely approximate what the subject property would fetch in a voluntary deal between a willing buyer and willing seller.
“This gets everything in line with what properties are actually selling for,” Martin, now in her third four-year term as elected Assessor of Property, explained in the WCPI recording session.
“We’ve had like a 65% overall growth as a county.”
In actual dollars, the total assessed value of all the county’s 26,000 parcels is now some $5.5 billion, Martin said. That’s up sharply from 2024, when the aggregate was reported at about $3.3 billion.
But your increased appraisal doesn’t necessarily mean your tax bill is going up. Again, state law applies, requiring that mass re-appraisals be revenue neutral. When the Warren County Commission sets the new tax rate this year, it can choose to reduce the rate so that total tax proceeds are about the same as 2024.
“Most people’s taxes are not going up much at all,” Martin said in the radio recording that will play Wednesday and Saturday at 9 a.m. both days. “They see their appraisal has doubled but that doesn’t mean your taxes are going to double.”
In fact, the state’s technical experts calculate what is known as a “certified rate,” one that would be revenue neutral. That number is transmitted to county commissions and city councils, who then make the decision whether to adopt that rate or select something higher or lower.
“We actually have a preliminary number that pretty much cuts the tax rate in half,” Warren County’s assessor shared.
Appraised property values have been surging in many places in Tennessee, including Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County, where median values are up 45%. Much of the increase is attributed to the sizzling residential market.
But it’s a very different story for some of Music City’s largest downtown office towers where work-from-home and flight to the suburbs have hammered lease renewals and new contracts. Office vacancies are up 24%, according to the Nashville Business Journal.
The iconic Batman Building, the twin-spire colossus that has been the longtime home of AT&T regional operations, has seen its main tenant clear out of three full floors.
Bridgestone Tower, the city’s 10th largest building, saw its appraisal plumet 33 per cent.
For questions about the local re-appraisal and the process for appealing your new appraisal if you disagree with the numbers, call Martin’s office at (931) 473-3450.
