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Lake milton property owners question rapid rise in valuations
LAKE MILTON
Lakefront land values in this summer paradise for swimmers, boaters and water skiers are soaring, according to Mahoning County’s real-estate reappraisal.
But not everyone is eager to cash in.
“We’ve been there together for 20 years now,” said John Brallier, a former Craig Beach village councilman, who lives on Normandy Road with his wife, Marilyn.
“To us, it’s just not worth selling. We have no intention of selling,” Brallier said, referring to a 50-by-100-foot vacant Jersey Street lot adjacent to their residence, which gives the couple a view of the lake from their home.
“I’m not out to make a profit. I’m just out to live in a home,” Brallier said.
The tiny plot of vacant, buildable residential land, which the Bralliers consider part of their home, has soared in appraised value from $12,600 to $53,240 in the county’s recent land reappraisal. Those tentative results were made public Sept. 12.
Official new real-estate tax rates and amounts based on the reappraisal, which will be reflected in February tax bills, haven’t been calculated yet.
But Brailler said he and his wife can’t easily afford a tax increase on the vacant lot from the current $217 to what he expects will be more than $900 a year.
“I think that the market value is exorbitant, and it is causing me to pay taxes, which are reaching the end of my income bracket,” Brallier said.
Brallier is an hourly shipping worker at Harbison-Walker Refractories in Windham. His wife is a rural service specialist at the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership in Sebring.
“I don’t believe it’s fair to put people in a position where they might lose their property because someone that has a few million [dollars] to throw around can afford to buy a little pleasure house along the lake,” Brallier said.
“It’s very depressing. It’s going to put a strain on a lot of people, us included,” said Marilyn Brallier, who described their community as “a nice neighborhood” with many elderly residents.
County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, whose office oversaw the state-mandated, once-every-six-years mass real-estate reappraisal, said he empathizes with the Bralliers and that he wishes the state Legislature would enact a cap on real-estate tax increases to protect homeowners in this situation.
“We don’t want to penalize those folks for sticking it out, if you will, in a market that is completely beyond their control,” Sciortino said.
The county auditor’s office and its appraisers follow state law, which requires appraisers to set property values based on recent sales of similar real estate in the same neighborhood, Sciortino said.
“We have the summer homes, the vacation homes that have been remodeled, built and sold going for prime, prime dollars,” Sciortino said.
John Brallier said the appearance of mass appreciation around the lake has occurred “because people are foolish enough to pay extravagant prices for property that’s not worth it.” On Jersey Street in Craig Beach, which is on the west side of the lake, several “for sale” signs are now displayed, and foreclosures have occurred, he said.
“I don’t believe that today’s economy supports a big real-estate market. I think we’ve hit one of the highest foreclosure rates in the past year,” Brallier said.
Also expressing skepticism about reported massive real-estate price inflation at Lake Milton is Atty. Joseph Gardner, a former president of the Lake Milton Association, who resides year-round in a 10-room lakefront home on North East River Road on the east side of the lake in Milton Township.
“I think that there’s been a downturn at Lake Milton, just like there’s been everywhere else,” said Gardner, whose law office is in Canfield and who headed the Lake Milton homeowners’ association for 17 years.
“I think there are skyrocketing tax values. However, I disagree that there are skyrocketing actual market values,” in the last two years, he added.
“With the downturn of the economy, there’s been a downturn also in the actual value of the properties,” he said.
“If you’re asking me what has caused the tax values to rise, I think the county has to get the money somewhere, so that’s a good spot to target,” he said of the Lake Milton waterfront.
However, Ken Jones, an appraiser with Integrity Appraisal Services Inc. of Niles, which performed the reappraisal for the county, said the county’s tax- revenue needs had no bearing on the work of his company.
“We set our values according to the market,” Jones said.
Integrity independently set tentative values based on recent sales of similar properties in the same area and on the age and condition of the properties, and no county official instructed the firm to value land to maximize tax revenues at Lake Milton, Jones added.
Jones said he believes the recent reappraisal accurately reflects the current real-estate market at Lake Milton.
“The market values speak for themselves,” Sciortino agreed, characterizing notions about the relationship between the appraisal results and county’s revenue needs as “nonsense.”
Gardner said he believes the largest gains in real- estate value at Lake Milton occurred before the recession began in 2008, not during the recent reappraisal.
“Five years ago, it was really going up,” Gardner said of real-estate valuation there.
A check of real estate along North East River Road in Milton Township showed high land and home values in the county ratings, with one 14-room, 2007-vintage home remaining fairly constant in the county ratings at more than $1.2 million, with its 1.4-acre site valued at $381,140.
“We want our property values to go up, but we don’t want our taxes to go up, and we can’t have it both ways. I don’t know where the solution lies,” said Suzanne Fleming, who owns a six-room house with a lake view on Jersey Street in Craig Beach.
Although the appraisal process doesn’t read the minds of real-estate buyers and sellers, Sciortino said Lake Milton clearly has some major selling points.
The repair of the dam and the creation of Lake Milton State Park in 1988, with its improved concrete boat launches, and the installation of new public water supply lines and sanitary sewers, spurred the demand for lakefront land, Sciortino and Gardner agreed.
If the Jackson-Milton schools retain their newly-earned excellent-with- distinction academic rating, which makes them among the county’s best schools, that would be another residential real-estate selling point, Sciortino said.
“Proximity” to Youngstown and “beauty” were the words Fleming used to describe the features she finds attractive about Lake Milton.
“It has a beach and a park, and it’s beginning to have some educational and cultural events,” Fleming said, referring in part to concerts and other events at the new park amphitheater near the beach.
“You can get that vacation feel 20 minutes out of Youngstown,” observed Kimberly Sefcik, commodore of the private Lake Milton Boat Club at Craig Beach.
For Fleming, a retired Youngstown State University research associate, the words “supply and demand” sum up real-estate activity at Lake Milton.
“The property values are going up because there’s a limited amount of lakefront/lakeview property; and there’s been a resurgence in the development of property around the lake in the last 10 years,” she said.
When the Bralliers contacted Ken Jones about their land’s value, they learned of a 50-by-200-foot vacant Jersey Street lot that was sold to a Columbus man for $77,000 on Dec. 29, 2010, and now has a house being built on it. In the county’s recent reappraisal, that lakeview plot soared in value from $14,900 to $71,370.
A vacant 79-by-148-foot lakefront lot on Harbor Avenue on the east side of the lake in Milton Township sold for $216,000 on June 3, 2010. The county reappraisal raised the valuation of that lot from $73,500 to $182,030.
Jones cited all three of those vacant lot sales as evidence supporting the recent revaluations in an interview with The Vindicator. “We don’t set the market. We just analyze the market,” Jones said.
“People are willing to pay that type of price to be on the lake, and our values tend to reflect that,” he said. “People tend to want to be on the water, and they’re willing to pay for that,” he added.
Jones also noted four small vacant lots for sale on Lakeview Street in Milton Township, which face a bay on the east side of the lake, for which Vayner Realty Co. of Lake Milton has set asking prices between $69,900 to $79,500. Three are 50-by-120-foot lots, and the fourth is 81 feet by 120 feet.
“People are liking the lakefront properties,” said Howard Vayner, the real estate broker, who has owned the company bearing his name for 30 years and has been selling real estate for 35 years.
When modest cabins are replaced by expensive new structures, as has happened at Lake Milton, “that raises the bar” on real-estate values near them, he said.
However, Vayner said, “You definitely hate to hear those stories” concerning senior citizens being displaced by higher taxes that result from higher land valuations.
The reported lakefront land-value inflation at Lake Milton has contributed to the Jackson-Milton school district’s 3.4 percent total real estate value growth in the last six years.
But this trend contrasts sharply with total land value declines in most other Mahoning County school districts and with the county’s overall 4.2 percent loss in valuation.