The City of Harrisonburg just released updated assessment data for all City properties, which showed a 1% increase in overall property values.  When diving down into residential properties we discover that there was a 1.4% decline in single family home values and a 0.3% decline in townhome values.  These will result in small decreases in tax bills if the tax rate does not change.  (see DNR article)

Some, however, might suggest that these very small adjustments in value are out of line -- that their property values have adjusted much more than 1.4% or 0.3% over the past year.  Indeed, our overall market area has experienced a decline in median prices of roughly 5% over the past year.

But looking a bit closer, there are actually some areas where our local real estate market is performing reasonably well....



During the first 10 months of last year (Jan 2009 - Oct 2009) there were 121 sales of single family homes in the City of Harrisonburg, with a median sales price of $209,000.

This year, however, during the same time period (Jan 2010 - Oct 2010) there were 128 sales of single family homes in the City of Harrisonburg, with a median sales price of $211,250.

Again, this improvement runs counter to the market as a whole, where sales are still slowly declining and prices are still slowly declining.