Time is running out to file your appeal of your TRIM notice property value assessment. The appeal must be filed by Friday September 18 at the Minutes Office on the second floor of the Administration building next to the county commission chambers in the old courthouse.

Additional information has been obtained from the property appraiser’s office on Lehigh Acres homes that received notices that their land valuation had decreased but the value of the home on the property had been increased which was not available at the time of our TRIM notice article.

Overall Lee County property values decreased 22.7 percent in 2008. The Lehigh Fire District declined 49 percent. There are 227,021 homes excluding condominiums and commercial on the tax rolls in the county. Some 207,787 decreased in value with 2,627 showing no change. Only 16,607 showed an increase.

Calculations of value are based on fair market sales and comparison with homes within a geographic major neighborhood. For example Neighborhood 01 covers south Lehigh from 1st Street W, Lee Blvd., Sentinel Blvd. to the Hendry County line, to SR 82 and the Lehigh developments south of SR 82, and extending to Gateway in the West.

Within the major neighborhood subset areas are established by number. Investigation has revealed abnormal results.

In the interest of full disclosure this writer will be filing an appeal as result of analysis of my subset neighborhood 187.

In area 187 there are 1,163 home which formed the valuation classification. Of these 1,097 decreased in value and 66 increased. I believe a faulty methodology was used due to insufficient number of comparison properties – in this case two were used. When there are too few properties used for analysis the methodology breaks down and an absurd result occurs.

By rational analysis the house value could not have increased 21 percent from 2007 to 2008 when there was no structural change such as an addition to the house.

In order to make an analysis of your situation you will need to go online to the property appraiser’s web site and review the detailed property breakdown for your home and compare 2007 and 2008 values.

If you find that the value of the building on your property was increased you may have the basis for an appeal.

If you decide to appeal there is a $15 filing fee.