Board of Aldermen 03-12-2019 Page 27
could put your arm through, you say “well there’s some deferred maintenance there”. | wouldn't call that a
B Grade anymore. KRT looked at this house and said, “Well that’s a B’. No. And that’s worth
$400,000.00. Ok, cool that’s fine.
But then you come right up from it, three houses up and you’ve got a beautiful, painted lady Victorian, a
little bit larger, attached two car garage, beautifully done, 8 permits and very well rated and this is
$13,000.00 grand more, with a B Grading? How can that be, how could you look at that house there and
basically give it 3% more for this house here? Next to it is a beautifully restored conventional home
wrapped in vinyl trim, new windows, very lovely done, this has a Grade C. Now what is it assessed at?
$329,000.00. That’s a really nice valuation. How can this be so low and this house that has fallen into
such disrepair be so high graded above?
All these homes are down in the block between Courtland and Laton. So land valuation is maybe 20%
lower down there. And then you come up to the block where land valuation is higher and these two homes
sit next to each other, this is a painted lady Victorian, very nicely done, a lot of exterior work, new kitchen
put in, but older, older windows, you know certainly not all restored by any means, but very nicely
maintained property and this is sitting at $410,000.00 virtually the same price as the house at 1 Berkeley
Street. The building value on this house is $250,000.00 and the building value on the first house is
$280,000.00. How can that be? This house next to it just sold. This house the exterior is definitely better
than the first one | showed you but if you walk into this house you are in 1945 and it is really 1945. And it
just sold to a young couple for $400,000.00 which was a high price and needs a lot of work but it’s hard to
believe that KRT would put this house above this house and they are right next to each other, they are right
next to each other, they are neighbors.
So | look at what KRT did on our street and | say, “that wasn’t well done”. And people have abated on
some of these changes and | think very legitimately so, | think the second go-around on some of those
houses was absolutely uncalled for. And people were irate, because once they put the change on, there
was no hearing process anymore, because it was the second go-around. And all they had left was to
abate. And you know the Assessing Office is like, “Well what is the problem their taxes went down’. The
problem is that one of these houses took an $80,000.00 hit for honestly | even don’t know why. You know?
So the model shows you right there, there is a problem with the KRT model.
Go over to Monadnock because | talked about Monadnock at the last meeting and if you just — that was an
interesting street too. That’s a street where the model fails and it’s right in the old neighborhood because
they had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 sales and three of them were in the KRT window, where KRT took the data and used
it to make their model, they captured the sales data and built their model. Cool. So a house sells for
$355,000.00, it is used to build the model and KRT spits out a price on that of $269,000.00. That is pretty
off from the sale price and that house ends up with a 76% valuation, that’s what the model did. Another
house sold within the window of their model for $232,000.00, it comes in at $200,000.00, it is at 86%
valuation. Now their goal was to be between 90 and 110. They have another one that sells for
$230,000.00; it comes in at $182,000.00 with their model, 79%. They have another one that sells outside
of the window, it sells for $522,000.00; it comes in at $489,000.00, that one hit at 94%. Everything else hit
at 81, 76, 86, 79.
So what does that tell you? Well | don’t know. | guess when | bought my house and | said, “Well we kind of
overpaid for it” and they said, “No there’s no such thing”. KRT’s model shows me all over the City there is
overbought houses. They just, they are not worth what they paid for them and the model will show you,
relative to other homes, that’s not the valuation they should have. That’s fine, I’ll accept that, let’s apply
that to everyone now when we are abating and following our rules, let’s apply it to everyone. So that is kind
of an interesting thing and so | think we have to recognize that there are limitations in the KRT model and
there are plenty of people who don’t see equity in that model. And Berkeley Street is a picture street,
Monadnock Street is another street that really puts it out there. | think we can say that they did the best
they could, it was an inherently flawed system, we don’t just want to focus on IT improvements, we want to
