Mortgage Matters

Announcer 0:00
This is a kunv Studios original program.

Wesley Knight 0:03
The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Roland Daniels 0:43
Good morning, Las Vegas, welcome to mortgage matters. I'm Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva financial. My NMLS number is 355859, and our company, NMLS number is 42056, and as always, I'm here with my amazing partner, Heidi Griffith, good morning. Heidi, good

Heidi Griffith 1:03
morning. Roland, I'm Heidi Griffith. I'm also a mortgage advisor and your Director of Client Services. My NML list number is 2247754, today's show is going to be really good. We have a really special guest lined up for you today. Before we get started, I just want to take a moment and remind you about our upcoming classes. These are great opportunities for anyone looking to take that step towards home ownership. So tomorrow evening, that's Monday, October 14, from six to 7:30pm we're hosting our online session of all about down payment assistance. In this class, we explain how DPA works, bust a lot of myths that surround down payment assistance. Show you how to get started, and we cover the 16 different down payment assistance programs we offer. It's a fantastic way to learn what's available and how you can take advantage of these programs, right?

Roland Daniels 1:53
Yes. Then on Friday, October 18, from 11am to 1230 we're teaming up with the Nevada housing division for an in person, homebuyer education DPA class. This class will cover the amazing programs that Nevada housing has to offer. Attendees will receive their home buyers education certificate, which makes them eligible for Nevada housing and Nevada Rural Housing down payment assistance programs. Lunch is on us. If you want to sign up and get more information, give us a call or text us. That number is 702-210-2057 that's 702-210-2057 and we're here to help you get started on your journey to home ownership. All right, let's jump in today's show. We're excited to have Brianna Johnson with us and as our very own clark county assessor, Brianna has been serving our community for over 20 years, helping people understand property assessments exemptions and much, much more

Heidi Griffith 3:01
exactly, Brianna was elected as Clark County Assessor in 2018 but she's been with the assessor's office since get this 1995 she's held several key roles, including manager of property appraisal, and was promoted to Assistant Director of assessments. That's a mouthful. Assessment services in 2016 as the assessor, Brianna oversees the daily operations of the office and the assessments around 775,000 parcels, 25,000 manufactured homes and 45,000 businesses right here in Clark County. She also supervises the processing of about 80,000 exemptions for the blind veterans and surviving spouses of veterans. Brianna is a proud Las Vegas native. She graduated from Valley High School go Vikings, and she earned her bachelor's degree right here at UNLV and Business Admin. She holds a property tax appraiser certificate for both real and personal property from the state of Nevada, and she's active in organizations like the International Association of assessing officers and Toastmasters International.

Roland Daniels 4:07
We are thrilled to have you on today's show. Welcome. Thank

Brianna Johnson 4:10
you. Thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure to be here today, and it is also I just love sharing the information about the role of the assessor and what the assessor's office does as a public servant. I am a proud public service and I servant, and I feel it is my duty, my obligation, to share this information. Thank

Heidi Griffith 4:30
you for coming. We're really excited, because this is kind of one of those topics we were talking about it when you came in that people don't think that they need to know until they need to know, right? So that's why we have you here today, because Roland actually attended a couple of your presentations. I had the pleasure of attending a recent presentation, and you really just you're filled with information. So if you're a property owner in Clark County and or you plan on becoming a homeowner and or land owner, right? This information? Is worth sticking around for today. So why don't you just jump in and give us the basics and let us know what we don't know. All right, absolutely.

Brianna Johnson 5:07
So first, I will start by saying the mission of the assessor's office is to perform accurate and equitable assessment functions to serve each and every one of you the public. Our vision statement is to be the most technologically advanced, user friendly assessor's office in the country. And I know that may sound like a very bold statement, but we do the work that we do with the staff that we have, utilizing technology, not only for the purposes of getting the work done in the office, but technology is also important to you all as taxpayers, to make sure that it is easy for you to do business with our office and the customer service that we provide and the technology we use, because you don't have the option but to do business with us to meet your needs for assessment purposes. So I pride myself on our level of customer service and the technology that we provide to you all as taxpayers to make sure it is easy for you to do business with us. That is awesome. Yes, and our role. So the role of the assessor is to discover list and value all real and personal property within this county. And I know I'm probably not the most popular person, but the role that we do is so important because it funds critical services in our community, and some of those services include, but are not limited to fire, police, and, most importantly, the education of our children too, exactly. So this role, again, is that important? Because it funds critical services in our communities.

Heidi Griffith 6:46
Pay your property taxes, absolutely.

Brianna Johnson 6:50
And so the role of the assessor. And of course, we do the valuation of property. And currently and I, in my bio, Miss Heidi, read off some numbers. But of course, those numbers are changing daily. And currently we have over 830,000 parcels here in Clark County. And those numbers are probably on our website, and we probably need to update those. But again, they're changing constantly. So at this point, we're over 830,000 parcels of those 830,000 parcels, about 99 98% of those are residential parcels, meaning the parcels that are owned by homeowners. Okay, we have about seven over 750,000 residential parcels, 20,000 or so commercial parcels, 4800 industrial parcels, and about 55,000 vacant land parcels. And I know I talk about the number of parcels that we have in our county, and I know it may seem like the vacant land parcels are really, really low, because a lot of times those vacant land parcels are large parcels, meaning they're 1000s of acres for one particular parcel, but it's when, and that's why I say these numbers are constantly changing. Because when you have a builder who purchases one lot that is one parcel, and then they subdivide it into 100 parcels, that increases the residential count, but then it takes away from the vacant land count. So that's kind of how the parcels work, we also value and Bill and collect the taxes on personal property. So personal property, you may ask, like, what is it that you build for personal property or assess for personal property? So to all the business owners that are out there, anything you use to operate your business, be it the desk, the chair, the computer, anything you use to operate your business. It is taxable. We are a self declaring state. So that means every year, if you're in business, we send you a declaration, and you tell us what you have. You provide us the year you acquired it, how much you paid for it, and we'll take it from there and what, and what the item is,

Roland Daniels 9:01
what if I chose not to provide that information to you, what happens?

Brianna Johnson 9:05
So if you choose not to complete the declaration, what we do is we estimate you so we look at like businesses. Let's just say you own a real estate company. We would look at another real estate company and say, Well, what type of assets do they have? What does their value look like? And then we would apply that same value to you. So we don't just put a number out there to say, oh, maybe it's this. We look to like businesses to make sure you're comparable. Again, we're back to the fair and equitable, which is our mission, to be fair and equitable. So we use like businesses estimate in a like manner, and then we assessed you for your equipment. Makes

Heidi Griffith 9:42
sense, makes sense,

Roland Daniels 9:43
excellent information. It is absolutely

Brianna Johnson 9:46
so with that here in Clark County, we have over 50,000 businesses. We also value manufactured homes. We have about 24,000 of those. And we also value personal aircraft and. For those of you that are out there that own personal aircraft, we value those as well. And we're not talking your Spirit Airlines or Southwest Airlines. We're talking you own an aircraft that you park at the North Las Vegas airport, Boulder City Airport, mesquite airport, your own personal aircraft that is also

Heidi Griffith 10:16
taxable. That was a new one to me, yes,

Brianna Johnson 10:19
yes. And also the role of the assessor. We don't just have the authority to do whatever it is we want to do. We are governed by statute NRS 361 and NAC 361 the Nevada Revised Statute 361 and the Nevada Administrative Code that governs everything that we are able to do in our office as far as valuing your property, how we value your property, it is all statute driven. We do not decide how to value your property. That comes from the Department of Taxation,

Heidi Griffith 10:53
right? So we don't have any right to be angry with you. You just follow what the law says. We

Brianna Johnson 10:59
just follow the law. Absolutely. That is exactly what we do. And of course, as an appraiser, there is some level of interpretation to how you value, but the good news about us here in Nevada and how we value is we use sales, right? So just to kind of give you an example, land is based on market. So if we see vacant land sales throughout the valley and a corner piece lot sold for $10,000 which is probably not realistic these days, I'll say $200,000 better, and the one across the street as it comes time for us to value every year, because we value all parcels annually, we look at the sales that we've gathered throughout the year, and we say, well, if that just sold for $200,000 that probably is what the market is for these parcels around it, sometimes some interior parcels, and this is where the judgment comes in. Okay, the interior parcels, you may not have as much access to those, so perhaps they could be a little bit less, but the corner lots have, you know, more access, your egress and Ingress, you know, to get in and out of those, they may have a little bit more value being a corner lot. So we take all of that into consideration. And again, we look at sales to see what is happening in the market to help us determine how we value makes complete sense, right? And so with the improvements, the improvements are a little bit different, because we are governed by statute to use the cost approach, and we do that using the Marshall and Swift manual that we are mandated to use based on statute. So we get the cost from the manual, we put them into our system, and we put in your attributes, the square footage of your home, how much concrete driveway or pavers Do you have? Do you have a patio? Is it a one story, a two story? All of those attributes we put into our system, and those costs come out, and it says, haha, the improvements for this parcel is $250,000 so that is how we value the improvements. So we have a land value, we have an improvement value, and the total of that, those two components gives us a total taxable value. And when we arrive at our total taxable value, we then say to ourselves, are we exceeding market value or full cash value? And in order to determine that, remember, we capture all sales that have happened in the market. So we add your house on to the record, and we have it at $500,000 we look at your sales price that is recorded on your deed, because your sales price is on your deed, and we say, wow, they paid $500,000 this is what we have it valued at. We're right. We're not exceeding full cash value. But for the sake of conversation, let's say we have it at $500,000 but your deeds say it you paid 450 we are now exceeding market and so we have to make adjustments for that. Where did we get things wrong? Or did you get a deal? Did you sell to your sibling, did you sell to a cousin? Did your parents give you a discount? So those are the types of sales that we say are not arm's length transactions. So we look at true arm's length transactions to make sure that this is a valid sale. It makes sense. And if we are exceeding we make adjustments. Okay,

Heidi Griffith 14:20
wonderful, wonderful. So you're not going to pay taxes on more than your properties were absolutely okay, that's wonderful. Absolutely.

Brianna Johnson 14:27
We do our very best to make sure that we are not, and by law, we cannot exceed market right?

Heidi Griffith 14:33
So there's got to be some kind of algorithm with the technology that you utilize, right? Absolutely, perfect, absolutely.

Roland Daniels 14:39
And how often are those taxes assessed annually?

Brianna Johnson 14:43
So we value annually. The thing about our office is so I'll give you an example of how, about how we are working values right now for the future. So right now in my office, the appraisers are working on valuing all of the parcels they have. Until the end of November to get all 800 plus 1000 parcels valued. That's a lot. That's a lot of parcels with limited staff. And those values that they're working on right now are for July one of 25 right through June 30 of 26 okay, yes, because it's a big job.

Heidi Griffith 15:20
I mean, we've got to get in there early and get all of that stuff taken care of early, absolutely.

Brianna Johnson 15:24
And so the process is we're valuing everything right now. By law, come December, you will receive a notice of value card. It is a blue card, and it is going to tell you what your value was in the previous year and what your value is this year. And on that card, you will find a bunch of information that tells you all about the values. It also talks about our exemptions. It talks about a number of things. And on that card, if you feel that we are exceeding market value, you have every right to appeal your value. So you can call our office, get a form, and you go before the board of equalization and you state your case to say why you feel we are exceeding market value. But again, a lot of times we test the market prior to closing the role and prior to sending out those notices, so we're pretty confident in our values when we send those notice of value cards out. That's

Heidi Griffith 16:20
great, but that's a card that you want to look for in the mail. If you own property. A lot of times people, you know, we get so much mail, and we know so much of it is junk mail, make sure you're keeping an eye on it. And that comes out. You said December, yes, so keep an eye out in December. And you know what? We'll do our best to remind you

Brianna Johnson 16:37
yes for that yes, and every year and and you can't miss it. I mean, not to say you can't miss it, but you get the notice of value card. And we also posted to remind everyone in the newspaper as well, right? So it's on our website, it's everywhere. So

Heidi Griffith 16:53
if you're still reading the newspaper, you'll see that. If not, we'll remind you and keep your eye open, because if you are a property owner. Obviously, you want to see what the county has your property assessed at, absolutely,

Brianna Johnson 17:04
absolutely. So we were talking about taxable values and how we can exceed market so once we arrive at that taxable value, we take 35% of that value, okay, 35% of that value is considered your assessed value, and those are the values that we send down to the treasurer's office. So let's just say, for example, we valued your home at 250,000 the 250,000 is not what you pay taxes on. You pay taxes on 35% of that value, because the law says that the assessment ratio is point three five or 35% right? So we would send down to the Treasurer 87,500 for you to pay taxes on. And those taxes come out to be approximately $2,800 just based on a $250,000 home, so to speak, right? And with that, you have the $2,800 so for those in the real estate industry or the lending industry, and I know a lot of times you have questions about, How do we maybe estimate what the taxes are going to that is escrow, yes. And so in order to do that, our rule of thumb is, we like to say, well, estimate 1% of purchase price, okay? And plus the land. If you go to the treasurer's website, land is always taxed Yes, so you will always know what the taxes are on the land. And if you think about the example I just gave, where we valued a house at 250,000 and the taxes are around 2800 that's about equivalent to a little over 1% but if adding back in the land kind

Heidi Griffith 18:42
of gets you there, right? This is kind of an area I just want to kind of interject, because I just had a thought. This is an area with new home construction that always throws up, you know, concern, because if you purchase a home in a new home community, in most instances, your taxes that first year are going to be substantially less than they will be moving forward, right? Because we're still using that assessed value for just the land. Am I correct in saying that? No, so

Brianna Johnson 19:07
it depends on the timing. Okay, so let's just say you do purchase a new build, and the assessor's office has already been out there and picked up the home, right? Well, at this point, the taxes for the home and the improvements are there, and the taxes, more than likely, are going to be assessed. Okay, however, depending on, of course, remember, we have over 800,000 parcels, so it's possible that a new subdivision can come online, and we may not get to your home, right? So sometimes you could actually maybe go almost a year, and depending on the time it was built, if it's built anything after July one, because July one is our lien date. If it's built after July one, that full year, if the home wasn't there, you don't pay taxes, but the following year is when you pay taxes, right? So,

Heidi Griffith 19:51
so you want to be be aware in those types of situations that your taxes will then go up if they haven't already been assessed. Cost, with the with the structure, that

Brianna Johnson 20:01
is correct, okay? And of course, that's where a big question comes in, because now it could affect your mortgage payment. It sure can. And so a lot of times, the escrow company may have accounted for those taxes to be paid in your payment, and then if the assessor's office hasn't made it out there and they say, well, by law, we can't keep this money, so you get a refund check, right? That's right. And so you got your refund check because the mortgage company can't keep it, and you got the refund check. But then the next year rolls around and they say, Uh oh, we got your tax bill for the improvements on your home because you were only paying on the land. Now your mortgage payment is going to go back up because your escrow account is

Heidi Griffith 20:39
short. That is correct. Your escrow account is short, and we've got to make that up. So just be aware that if you are purchasing new construction that you either ask those questions, your real estate agent should be able to look at the MLS listing and know generally what the property taxes in the area are. Right. Absolutely,

Brianna Johnson 20:58
right, absolutely but for an already constructed home, and it's a resale, the taxes are already on the website, and they know and it's most it's already established. So in those instances, you shouldn't have the up and down with your escrow, right? Everything should flow smoothly. It's the new builds where it gets

Heidi Griffith 21:16
tricky. Makes sense. Makes sense. Thank you for answering that absolutely, absolutely.

Brianna Johnson 21:21
And so just to kind of give all of the homeowners out there and the listeners out there an idea of what those values look like here in Clark County overall. So for residential, if you recall, I talked about the number of residential parcels that are out there. And of those residential parcels. Just as an example for 2324 it was 257 billion in taxable value, wow, just for the residential parcels. Did

Roland Daniels 21:52
you say 257,000,000,250

Brianna Johnson 21:55
7 billion in taxable value for the residential parcels. And fun fact that I like to share, because we all know that the strip is amazing, and everyone you know, they talk about all of the revenue that is brought in from the hotel casinos, which is a true statement when it comes to gambling and all of those things. But I always just like to compare and put into perspective the the amount of value that is coming from the residential homeowners versus the hotel casinos. So I spoke on residential having 257 billion in taxable value, but the hotel casinos, and that's just not the strip. That's also your neighborhood casinos like alliante or Durango, the new Durango, 40 point 4 billion, wow, in taxable value, wow, as opposed to 250 Wow.

Heidi Griffith 22:49
That's crazy, right?

Roland Daniels 22:50
Most of us would think that it's coming from the casinos and not the actual homeowners, right?

Heidi Griffith 22:54
There's just a lot of us, yes, yeah. People forget that we're here because we're in Vegas. Exactly, I

Brianna Johnson 23:01
see you exactly. And again, back to the over 750,000 parcels of residential, right, versus just the 20 some odd 1000 parcels of commercial, right?

Heidi Griffith 23:11
Exactly. There's, yeah, there's, there's, and it's growing rapidly. We know that, right?

Brianna Johnson 23:15
Yes, yes, especially with the need for housing. So the the residential is continuing to grow. So that's where we are. And then as a county Overall, about 371 billion in taxable value, with all things vacant land, residential, commercial, industrial, 371 billion.

Roland Daniels 23:36
That's a lot of money.

Brianna Johnson 23:38
Yes, yes. So again, very important office funding, critical services to our community. Okay? And then the the last thing I want to talk about really quickly is the property tax cap, as we know, and it's on your notice of value card. It's on our website. But just encouraging everyone, when you get your tax bill in the mail every year, please make sure to look at it. And if it is your primary residence, you can only have one in the state of Nevada. So if you own a home in Reno and you own one here, you have to pick one out of PIP, and the assessor's offices do communicate. So we want to make sure that you pick one residence in the state of Nevada as your primary as your primary residence, you get a 3% tax cap, which means that your taxes cannot go up any more than 3% of what you paid in the previous year. Not the value on your home, the assessors have to value accordingly, but your taxes. If it's your primary residence, you get a 3% tax cap abatement. All other property types get up to 8% the tax cap changes. It's, again, we're governed by statute, so the Department of Taxation tells us what the tax cap percentage is going to be for all other property types this year, it is 8%

Heidi Griffith 24:53
because we're a little short on time we're getting ready to wind up. But you gave some great information about that card, and. I'd love for you to touch on it, because I know that there was some concerns floating around about the 3% cap and the 8% and people being charged 8% and you gave a great presentation on that. Can you kind of go over that really quickly before we wrap up? Absolutely

Brianna Johnson 25:14
so let's talk about what that looks like, as far as bringing it into perspective. So let's just say, for example, your taxes were $1,000 in the previous year, right? And you have the 3% tax cap. That means the next year, your taxes can be no more than $1,030 keeping in mind, you cannot add any additional improvements, meaning the residents stayed exactly as it was. Now, if you add a pool, that's not a true statement anymore, right? If you add a new patio, that's not a true statement. Now, if you have 8% and you paid $1,000 in the previous year, and you have the 8% cap, your taxes will be no more than 1080 and so there is just a $50 difference, not to say that's not huge. It is but a $50 difference in the 3% tax cap and the 8% tax cap per 1000. Okay, okay. But if it is incorrect, if you get your tax bill and you realize that, Oh no, this is 8% you just call our office and you have until the following June of the next year. So if you got your tax bill this year and it says 8% and it should be three. You call our office, and if you don't call us right away, you have until June of 2025,

Heidi Griffith 26:27
so you've got some time, and you want to make sure you check your tax bill. That's, I think that's the biggest takeaway from this. When we are property owners and we we've got a primary residence, we want to make sure we check that tax bill, make sure that it's reflecting the 3% if, in fact, that's our primary residence, right, that is correct. What

Roland Daniels 26:45
if my tax bill is reflecting 8% but it's my primary residence, how do I get the 3% and when will it take effect? Was it? Does it happen immediately after I make the call?

Brianna Johnson 26:56
So once you call us and we send you the form, you can email the form back to us. We process the form. We do our checks. You know, do you have any other properties? We we go through that process. If it's valid, we put it in, we send it down to the Treasurer, and that's an every two week process. Okay, so the treasurer will get it, and then they do their process. And what will happen is they will adjust your taxes, and it will go into effect for your remaining quarters that are due pending on the time frame, right? Because we pay quarterly exactly you pay quarterly, so it may not necessarily result in a refund, but it will adjust the remaining quarters that are due. That's

Heidi Griffith 27:30
great information to know. So if the listeners want to reach out because they've got questions about their current bill, how do they get a hold of the assessor's office

Brianna Johnson 27:39
so they can call our office at 70245538827024553882

or they can send an email, and it's a long one, to AO customer service requests at Clark County in the.gov Perfect,

Heidi Griffith 27:56
perfect. So if you have any questions, make sure you reach out to the assessor's office. Brianna, thank you so much for being here. I know there's so much more that you have to talk about. We're running out of time. Hopefully we can get you back on the show. Absolutely, absolutely wonderful, wonderful. Brianna,

Roland Daniels 28:10
thank you again for joining us today and sharing such valuable information on property assessments. It's been a pleasure having you today.

Heidi Griffith 28:18
We're so excited. Thank

Roland Daniels 28:19
you. And for our listeners, if you have any more information or questions that you want answered as a homeowner, feel free to reach out. My number is 702-210-2057 that's 702-210-2057

Heidi Griffith 28:37
and if you're thinking about buying a home or you want to learn more about down payment assistance. Remember, we've got our upcoming classes on the 14th of October, and then again, we've got the in person class with the Nevada housing division. That is Friday, October 18. That is from 11am to noon. You can feel free to call us or text us to register or get more information. Again, like Roland said, the number 702210205, 022102057,

Roland Daniels 29:03
thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next Sunday at 7:30am right here on K, U, N, V, 91.5, for another episode of mortgage matters. Have a fantastic week, everyone.

Heidi Griffith 29:16
Thank you. Bye. You.