By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — A team of real estate inspectors is expected to begin working in the field within a few days as the first full-blown property revaluation in a decade gets under way, tax officials say.

Although the process is the first of its kind since 1998, it’s been even longer since a revaluation has taken place while real estate values are in the midst of a major nosedive. That hasn’t happened since at least 1988, says Tax Assessor Arthur Bouchard.
While it seems safe to say that property values will be trending downward, it’s impossible to forecast the depth of the trough, or what effect it will have on individual tax bills, says the tax assessor. The decline in property values will probably be most pronounced in marginal or blighted areas, he adds.
“It’s too early to make any determinations how this will affect the average taxpayer,” says Bouchard. “There’s just too many variables to put out a statistic on it that’s going to apply throughout the city.”
State law compels the city to perform revaluation on a regular basis so that all property owners are taxed on values that are current. Every three years, cities and towns may perform an abbreviated version of the process using recent property sales as a gauge for making adjustments in the overall tax base.
Once each decade, however, municipalities must perform a much more rigorous, hands-on version of revaluation that involves physical inspection of every parcel in the city, and the collection of reams of fresh data.
Vision Appraisal Technologies of Northborough, Mass., was recently hired to perform the process at a cost of $448,600. The company is under contract to inspect 7,565 homes, as well as several hundred more parcels, including condominiums, apartment houses, commercial buildings and vacant land, according to Bouchard.
A Vision Appraisal crew will set up shop on the fourth floor of City Hall on Monday and is expected to begin field work within a week, if not sooner, said Bouchard. Their goal is to determine property values as they exist on Dec. 31, 2008.
Individual property owners will be notified of their new assessments shortly after Vision Appaisal has completed the revaluation for the entire city, probably no later than April 2009, according to Bouchard. Those values will form the basis of tax bills the city will issue in July 2009 for the ensuing fiscal year.
Residents who think their assessments are too high may initially petition Vision Appraisal for an adjustment. The Tax Assessment Board of Review is the next avenue of appeal, followed by the Superior Court.
From Westerly to Washington State, there is no dearth of real estate indices of late chronicling the historic plunge in housing values, but it’s far too soon to tell how that will affect the pocketbooks of local residents in the wake of revaluation, according to Bouchard. There is plenty of confusion associated with revaluation, but the simple truth is that the city, by law, may collect no more in taxes than it needs to balance the budget — regardless of the worth of the real estate contained within its borders.
Thus, says Bouchard, if property values decline, the tax rate will likely have to be increased proportionally in order to keep tax collections constant. But that does not mean that individual tax bills will also rise — at least not all of them. The rule of thumb for revaluation, he says, is a third of all tax bills will increase, a third will decline and the balance will remain unchanged.
There may be no precedent in recent history for a revaluation in the midst of a major contraction in the housing market, said Bouchard. Perhaps the best comparison came in 1988, when revaluation took place on the eve of a significant collapse in housing prices. The problem, said Bouchard, was that the official recorded values reflected the top of the market, just before the bottom fell out.
After appraisal notices were distributed, many residents complained that they could not sell their homes for the comparatively high values the city was taxing them on. Despite the complaints, it wasn’t until the next revaluation, three years later, that the city was able to resolve many of the problems.
“It was something similar to the situation we’re in now,” said Bouchard. “In fact, I think it was a little bit worse.”