The following are questions commonly asked about real estate assessments in Arlington County. Specific questions not covered here may be directed to the Department of Real Estate Assessments at 2100 Clarendon Boulevard, Suite 611, Arlington, Virginia, 22201. Office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and the telephone number is 703-228-3920 (TTY: 703-228-4611). The email address is realog2 (at) arlingtonva.us.

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Q: Why is the County's assessment different than a private appraisal?

A: Arlington assesses real estate using mass appraisal methods. The assessments of the January 1 market values must be equalized, i.e., balanced, among all properties. Since the County ' s appraisals depend on the reconciliation of all sales occurring in a 12-month period in a particular neighborhood, an assessment represents a typical, or average, value for a property in relation to other property values. A private appraisal determines the value for a specific property on a certain date, usually based on recent sales of a few comparable properties. The private appraisal may be made for a variety of purposes, such as for purchase or sale, mortgage financing, a home equity loan, an estate settlement, income tax purposes, etc. A private appraisal can be useful in reviewing and evaluating an assessment, but it is not automatically better than or worse than an appraisal for assessment.

Q: How do trends in real estate prices affect assessments?

A: Normally, a property ' s assessment is based on the sales activity within its neighborhood. The assessed value of a particular property depends on the sales of other houses in the nearby area. Assessments are not based on larger area sales activity, including county-wide or ZIP code area trends which are sometimes reported in the press. For the January 1, 2008 assessment, residential assessments were based primarily on neighborhood sales occurring from July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007, and further refined using sales occurring in the summer and fall of 2007.

Q: Why is the assessment different from the sale price recently paid?

A: Assessments are based on typical values within neighborhoods. While the sale price of a property will affect its assessment, the effect will be diluted by the mass appraisal methods which consider all sales within a neighborhood in determining assessed values. Also, the County primarily uses sales occurring within a 12-month period which spans the time from 18 months prior to the January 1 assessment date to 6 months prior to the January 1 assessment date. A consequence of this time lag is that the assessments of properties which have sold very recently may differ from the sales prices by a marked amount when real estate markets are changing.

Q: Does lot size affect the assessment?

A: Lot sizes do affect assessed values, but not as much as some people may think. The County assesses residential land by the building site, where the utility of property is a chief determinant of value. A lot which is 20 percent larger than another is not necessarily 20 percent more valuable if each lot can serve as a single home site. The additional value of the larger lot will usually be less than 20 percent greater than the smaller lot. This means that the larger lot will be assessed less per square foot than the smaller lot.

Q: Do the actions of neighbors affect the assessed value of other properties?

A: At various times homeowners have asked that assessments reflect the presence of less-than-desirable neighbors -- such as those residents who may be loud, or park many cars on the street, or fail to mow their lawn regularly, etc. Usually these activities of neighboring property owners will not affect the assessment of a property because they are transitory -- neighbors come and go, while other economic variables such as house construction, neighborhood boundaries, lot size remain relatively constant.

Q: Must the property owner allow an interior inspection of his or her property when contesting an assessment?

A: No. However, County appraisers cannot address conditions of which they are not aware. An exterior inspection will provide some information about the property, but it will certainly fall short of a complete review. And, the outcome of the contested assessment may be affected by a lack of information.