Land Value Maps/Scapes

How Good are your Assessments?

 

Mechanicville, NY Land Value Map

A per square foot visualization of Mechanicville in Saratoga County, NY a former industrial town now populated by about 5,000 people.

Saratoga Springs, NY Land Value Map

Saratoga Springs is a wealthy community of 26,000 in Saratoga County, NY

Elmira, NY Land Value Map

Elmira, once noted for manufacturing of iron, glass and railroads, has declined from 50,000 to 30,000 people. It is in south Central New York, in Chemung County

Greenwich, CT

Greenwich, CT is one the best-assessed and wealthiest cities in the world. The assessments are supervised by HGFA President and town assessor Ted Gwartney. This land value scape, was prepared by Matt Harris, of the Austin, TX firm of www.geotrends.net

Bob Breglio, MRP

Bob Breglio supplied these maps, except for Greenwich, CT. His CV is impressive, we are grateful to have his professional skills.

The "Core" of Cortland's Apple

A bad pun, but a reality. The middle of the struggling city of Cortland, NY is where the land values are, as this latest map by Bob Breglio, CSE associate demonstrates. The state of New york is pouring money it doesn't really have into efforts to revive Cortland and dozens of other withering upstate cities. These efforts will have trouble bearing fruit if the land values in the city -many of which are vacant lots - have no incentive to be developed. The state's tax structure along with obsolete property taxes make reviving any upstate city tough. Our prescription for Cortland? Land Value Tax. Remove the barrier for buildings, and increase the incentive to do something with valuable vacant land. Pick your own tax policy, one that helps, not hurts.

Glens Falls, NY

Glens Falls once was a very rich little city, and has lost about 6% of its population since 2000, and many jobs in paper making and wood industries. Again, land values are concentrated in a downtown that has potential.

New York City Mapped Land Sales April 2008

Used With Permission

New York State: Two Sister Cities, Two Land Value Maps

Due to recent interest in New York in the land value tax, we have received many GIS-generated maps of land values. These maps in particular are fascinating. They take two cites very near to each other, Utica and Rome, both in Oneida County. Utica is about 16 square miles and has over 60 thousand population. Rome is over 75 square miles, and has about 34 thousand. Their developed areas, however, appear to be somewhat comparable. Even though there seem to be a disproportionately large number of parcels with missing data in both cases, the maps tell us an enormous amount. Besides the land value maps, the county mapper also provided us with land use maps. A comparison between the two types of map ought to show a correlation between land use - zoning - and land values. In Rome, there's a strong relationship; evidently the city revalues its property regularly (best practice). Utica, revalues less often. Moreover, central Utica is largely run down and derelict. It appears that possibly he has undervalued the land factor and may have over valued the structures. The correlation between the zone and the value is less pronounced. If CSE were to study the possibility of LVT in either town, we'd likely choose Rome first, as the values appear more reliable.

Albany County Land Value Maps: Albany, Watervliet, Cohoes

Previously published land value maps of Albany and Cohoes, along with a new creation completed for Mayor Manning of Watervliet and his staff. The land values in the map are far from perfect, but it can still shift burdens off a sizable number of households, while providing an incentive to the assessor to improve the quality of the land values in the next round. It will also offer to its citizens a means by which they can invest themselves in the tax process and to evaluate the fairness of its property taxes both for the conventional property tax and for LVT.

Kingston, NY Land Value Map

After a long-overdue assessment in 2008, Kingston, NY in Ulster County, this is the result, thank to Bob Breglio's GIS work. Mr. Breglio is a respected long-time assessor who wants his profession to understand the importance of good land values now and in the future.

Liberty Place and 1701 to 1705 Chestnut

Tax vs. Land Value Tax for two commercial properties