The purpose of this tool is to show individuals their place in a nationwide paradigm: that there is a discount for wealth and a penalty for everyone else that is fundamentally baked into the way we fund local government from property taxes. This includes schools, fire departments, public health and every other function of government that relies on property tax levies to operate.
This website pulls property values from Buncombe County Public Data, which you can find and search directly here. Because it is using public data, the results presented will continue to be accurate as it is regularly updated by the county. When you type in and address, the site searches the public data, matches the search to the appropriate data and then computes the per acre value by doing some simple math. The purpose of using “per acre” data is to get an apples-to-apples comparison for properties of any size. The assessed value per acre is then compared to the assessed value per acre of the Biltmore Estate. Not currently included are the “deferments” which happen after the initial valuation of the land. If the total deferments are included (an unknown portion of which may be due to improvement deferments rather than land deferments), the valuation per acre of the Biltmore property drops from $39,576 per acre down to $6,337.50 (as of 25 April, 2022). While the lower number, post deferment, is a better indicator of what the Biltmore Estate actually contributes to public coffers, the current version of the tool is attempting to explore the differences in assessed values. A future build of this tool will allow more comparisons and explain more of the assessments and deferments that are in the Buncombe County public tax records.
This site does not explore or account for comparisons of improvements to the land. The tool could easily be tweaked to do those comparisons, though there are potential methodological problems with that type of comparison that have not yet been overcome.
If you’d like to build your own version of this project, the code is available here, free for non-commercial usage.
