The Union County Auditor’s Office is in the middle of the 2025 property revaluation process and challenges from this year may lead to changes next time.
Auditor Andrea Weaver said one of the changes will be to the way properties are photographed.
“Our photographers have been out capturing street-front photos and there have been some challenges with that,” she said. “So, (for) the next reval, we will not do street-front photos.”
To do the revaluation, Weaver’s office contracts with a professional appraisal firm to carry out photographing every structure in the county, a process that began last June. Her office is required by law to do a revaluation every three and six years for those who own property in the county.
The six-year revaluation involves the physical documenting of properties whereas the triennial update looks at sales that have taken place in the previous three years. That information is then used to determine whether a change in market value has taken place since the revaluation, according to the auditor’s office.
Weaver said her office has received a “large volume” of pushback this time “in a very negative way” from property owners during the photographing process.
“It’s been exceedingly difficult to capture the data that we need to do to do our jobs,” Weaver said.
While photographers typically take between four and eight photos of each structure and are marked with magnets on their cars, vests and ID badges, Weaver said residents have still had concerns with workers on their properties.
She added that going forward, her office would utilize all the technology available to do photography to avoid typical street-front photos.
At this point in the process, all of the villages and cities have been captured, Weaver said. According to the appraisal firm, workers were most recently in Jackson, York and southern Union townships as they work to capture the remaining rural parts of the county. Weaver also said apart from leaving a door hanger, the workers don’t knock or otherwise disturb residents.
The last time the six-year revaluation was done in 2019, property values rose between 14% and 28%, depending on the area of the county.
After the triennial update of 2022, the county saw a 23.89% increase to residential parcels. Information from the auditor’s office showed market prices going up in every district in the county at the time of that analysis. Unsurprisingly, the areas of the highest growth have largely been Dublin, Jerome Township and the City of Marysville. All 44 tax districts have seen growth in the triennium, however.
The information collected this year will be effective Jan. 1 of next year for taxes payable in 2026.
“We’re about 15 months ahead and those values, once they are approved by the State of Ohio, they will be available for you on our website along about mid-September of next year,” she said.
Weaver said that rapid growth has also complicated the reval process for her office, adding processes her office doesn’t frequently do.
“It’s just crazy. We just cannot keep up with what is happening,” she said. “We have companies that are property owners, class two property owners, that are deciding to convert properties from rentals to condos.”
Ohio has two classes of property owners that include residential and agricultural property (class one) and all other real property (class two).
One notable area is the section of apartment buildings at Cook’s Pointe on Route 31.
“There’s 12 or 13 different buildings that have multiple apartments. That is being converted to condos with deeds,” she said. “The process of converting that within my office is lengthy and so we’re busy doing that kind of work in addition to all the other development that is currently happening.”