xxx
I support "freezing" your primary home's assessment value at the price you paid for your home, including improvements you make to the property up to $100,000 in value. Why should Virginians be penalized with higher assessments because the price of houses around their own are rising? This effectively punishes citizens who decide to remain in Virginia.
The rising prices are the result of a "housing bubble." This has meant a windfall for local governments but a heavy burden of taxation for the citizens. In Richmond, there has been no noticeable benefit to tax payers. Unless you count the massive construction projects undertaken by the city like tearing down the 6th Street Marketplace (which the city had built just 18 years earlier at a cost of $25.5 million), building the under utilized Canal Walk and the often empty Richmond Convention Center. These projects run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. For what? A promise of tourists who have failed to materialize. Perhaps it is all for 2007, Virginia's 400th anniversary.
An important secondary benefit is that low income senior citizens who have owned their homes for decades would have there assessed values frozen at the price they paid for their homes 20, 30, 40, or more years ago. Senior citizens have contributed a life time of service to our communities and this simple gesture will reflect how we hope to be treated as we reach our own golden years.
However, property which is purchased and held for speculative purposes (this includes properties that owners sit on waiting for the value to increase and properties that are used for rental purposes) should continue to be assessed at the current market rate value for such properties.