Cobb tax digest for 2023 projected to grow by 13 percent

Cobb Tax Assessor Stephen White said the county’s tax digest is expected to grow in 2023 by more than it did in 2022 in a record year as real estate prices continue to skyrocket.

In Cobb TV interview Friday with county communications director Ross Cavitt (you can watch it below), White said the combined residential and commercial tax digest is expected to grow by 13 percent.

The tax digest is the overall value of property—real and personal property, motor vehicles and public utilities—adjusted after exemptions and other items.

In 2022, the Cobb digest grew by 12 percent, to nearly $50 billion, mostly due to rising real estate prices that have nearly doubled in the last five years.

In 2021, the Cobb tax digest was $36.1 billion.

In the interview, White showed a graphic (below) illustrating the rise in the average home sale price in Cobb from $289K in 2018 to $453K in 2022.

In that time, the average home sale price in Cobb has gone up by around 50K a year, according to White’s estimates.

He said toward the end of last year, there were some signs that the growth was slowing, but that home prices will continue to go up.

“As we continue to have this desirability . . . especially in Cobb . . .  people want to live here . . . many things that bring people to Cobb continue to work in our favor and continue to make sure that our real estate prices move north.”

Local jurisdictions are required by law to regularly assess properties to maintain fair market values.

Each year Cobb assessors carve out a fraction of all properties for fresh assessments (see map).

Of the 245K residential properties in the county, White said, 175K last year experienced a change in value. For commercial properties, 10K of the estimated 13K total also had increased values.

“If there’s a separation between the sales price and our values, then it’s time to bring up our values to the sales price,” White said.

Those rising values prompted some Cobb citizens to object last summer to the fiscal year 2023 county budget. The general fund millage rate stayed the same, while the fire fund budget went up.

The growth in the tax digest resulted in an additional $60 million for the budget, but some complained that inflation was eating away at household budgets that would grow worse with rising assessments.

White said that appeals for tax assessments are low, about 1-2 percent overall. 

Full tax assessments will go out in May; the final tax digest is issued in July, as Cobb commissioners consider the fiscal year 2024 budget and just after the Cobb school board finalizes its fiscal year 2024 budget, which goes into effect on July 1.

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