by Jennifer Williams

Earlier this year when astronomical property valuations were released by Kansas County Appraisers, I released a video helping people understand how to dispute property valuations.

In that video, I mention how to accurately compare a subject property to both the comparable sales (comps) used by the County and valid comps not used by the County that may be a more similar property to the subject at hand.

Kansans have noticed a steady County appraisal increase in valuations over the past several years, but something about the increase in 2023 was enough for people to start pushing back.

Miami County’s median residential property valuation in 2023 went up 19.68 percent from last year, according to information from the Miami County Appraiser’s Office.

Angry residents spoke directly to the Miami County Commissioners and held an independent citizens’ meeting to help the people understand their options. The Miami County Republican Party also held a community meeting and panel to educate and inform the property owners.

Johnson County residents spoke out as well.

A record number of appeals were filed in Miami County with many more filed in Johnson County.

We were told increased valuations didn’t necessarily mean increased taxes, but as the Revenue Neutral required hearings were held, revenue neutral exceeded, and tax bills were mailed, sadly 20%+ increases in actual tax due in some school districts was the norm and not the exception.

I spoke at the USD 230 school board RNR hearing, letting members know exactly how increased valuations were padding the pockets of the school district at the mental and financial health of the community, showing how their share of capitalizing on rising appraisals had almost tripled the school’s portion of an individual’s tax bill in only 10 years. But they passed the budget anyway, proving that appraisals matter because it’s much harder to sneak through a large mill levy hike than it is to stay with a steady mill levy on skyrocketing appraisals.

Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, who voted against exceeding revenue neutral, addressed this as well. “What I find is amazing is that our budget seems to reflect how much taxes we can collect from increased valuations. . . How is it that our budget, year after year, reflects approximately what we can increase due to increase in valuations? And there is a direct correlation.”

I spoke at both of the Miami County citizen events, explaining the appeal process as well as sharing concerns I had from studying the data and the trends.

My first concern regarding fair market value and undue compulsion was presented at both citizen meetings and directly to the Miami County Board of County Commissioners during a packed house of citizens speaking about their inflated property valuations during the citizen comment time of a weekly BOCC meeting.

Very simply, KSA 79-503a states, “Fair market value” means the amount in terms of money that a well informed buyer is justified in paying and a well informed seller is justified in accepting for property in an open and competitive market, assuming that the parties are acting without undue compulsion.”

What is compulsion? Compulsion is the act of forcing someone to do something or the state of being forced to do something. It can be physical force, but it can also take other forms. There are different types of compulsion, such as obedience to orders, martial coercion, duress per minas, and necessity. Compulsion can also refer to an uncontrollable urge or inclination to do something. It is like a strong feeling that you cannot resist. Objective necessity or duress is another meaning of compulsion. It is when someone is forced to do something because they have no other choice.

The appraisers keep referencing the market increases since 2020 – since COVID – as justification for their valuations being at fair market value.

Show me one person in the past 3 years who didn’t do something out of undue compulsion, duress, objective necessity, or because they felt they had no other choice.

Our society as a whole and the inflationary bubble our entire economy has been operating under throughout the past 3 years can be described as nothing short of “undue compulsion.”

• People acting out of fear around masks and vaccines – undue compulsion.
• Government COVID mandates and shutdowns – undue compulsion.
• People leaving states of lockdowns for states of freedom, paying whatever the bank would approve in order to get to freedom – undue compulsion.
• Even buying toilet paper, people were faced with – undue compulsion.

For an appraisal process to try to capitalize on a “fair market value” that is actually an inflationary bubble, is only adding insult to injury. The appraisers are even consistently adding large inflationary values to recent sales, only months after the sales are taking place, and then using those inflated values as comps for other properties.

This only continues to compound the problem. In an attempt to be appraised at as high as the law allows, they are actually helping to create a bubble that is going to pop, with prices plummeting. But possibly not before they tax out homeowners who cannot afford the “bubble” values and the corresponding tax and insurance increases on their increasing valuations, or seniors who are being priced out of qualifying for the Homestead refund.

At some point, everyone needs to take a step back and let the market correct itself, something appraisers did not do as of January 1, 2023 after the historically low interest rates more than doubled by late 2022, adding over 4.6 percentage points to the rates that were in place on the sales in 2020, 2021, and early 2022. These sales figures that had low interest rates are being used as comps for 2023 values, with no adjustment given for the effects of an interest rate increase. The amount of interest greatly affects the amount of home a buyer can afford, and increased interest rates mean fewer people can afford the inflated prices of the “duress” sales comps being used, comps that benefited from rates around 3%, meaning the market slows and values lower or steady.

The 2023 Miami County Appraiser’s Real Estate Market Update shows the following slides, admitting the effects interest has on home values.

Yet the appraiser justified his valuations in a cover letter sent with the valuation notices, claiming that Miami County, Kansas is part of the Kansas City metro region and Zillow predicted Kansas City to be one of the fastest growth markets, and raised the values an average of 19.68% for residential and an average of 22.06% for farms.

That letter made rural residents angry because they weren’t interested in being part of or compared to the urban Kansas City region, and the statement seemed to try to justify the astronomical increases without giving valid comparable data to support the blanket claim.

Residents began comparing their county-provided comparable sheets, citing the large “comparability numbers,” which property tax attorneys claimed meant how similar a comparable property used is to the actual property. One property tax attorney told the Miami County group that anything over a score of 100 on the comparable numbers actually meant that it was not a valid comp because it was too dissimilar to the subject to make a proper comparison. Miami County property owners were seeing valuations in the two and three hundreds for this value.

Another excuse used by county appraisers for higher values is that there’s not enough inventory.

Yes, this was a common theme during the last few years, but not enough inventory does not automatically mean the economic curve of “value of available inventory” should shift.

What we are seeing throughout all of 2023 is that there’s not enough inventory because homeowners cannot afford to sell their homes and replace them with similar or better because the higher interest rates will cost them too much for a replacement home, many times even requiring them to buy less than they have because they can only afford less. Combine that with some values still artificially inflated from the “undue duress” trends of the last few years, and you have homeowners sitting on their properties instead of listing them because they don’t “have to sell” since they are no longer under duress to get out of a lockdown school district or a tyrannical state, as mandates have loosened.

We have nice homes on acreage in northwest Miami and southwest Johnson County that have sat on the market throughout all of 2023 at prices that would have triggered bidding wars over the past 3 years, but they’re not selling. Even though there’s minimal inventory on the market.

Why? It’s because the crazy COVID days are ending, buyers are hoping the interest rates will go back down since they cannot afford what they would have been able to afford when the rates were lower, and if that buyer is also a seller, they really don’t want to give up a 3% loan for a 7% loan if they don’t have to, since this erodes their wealth, putting them in a position to not even keep up with inflation in what they can afford.

As we see these valid comps sitting on the market with massive price reductions and still no sales, are the appraisers looking at them and realizing they may have jumped the gun with their 2023 values by not taking into consideration the effects of interest rates or COVID madness on valuations?

No. They are defending their software and algorithms.

This brings me to my second concern – algorithms are predictions or programmed values based on assumptions, averages, and statistics and are not actual comparisons to individual unique situations that require closer calculations. We don’t even know what’s going on inside the software to arrive at the numbers, and the results don’t make sense with some values and market adjustments that even the Appraisers office couldn’t explain. Even the software company themselves state that their software will be less accurate in rural areas where sales are fewer, but “will often provide accurate value estimates.”

This doesn’t sound accurate enough to be legal.

In March 2023, after doing my own comparisons of hundreds of individual valuations of rural properties in the northwest corner of Miami County, I discovered many concerns.

50-year-old ag buildings which should have been fully depreciated and in need of replacement, were doubling in tax value on average, with some individual buildings quadrupling in value.

Land prices were showing as doubling in value in only 3 years time.

Farmsteads with some land in ag were many times overpriced by $100,000 to $200,000 after taking the market value of the ag land into consideration.

This is because the County controls the value of the home, outbuildings, and the farmstead site the home sits on. The State controls the value of the ag land, which had little to no noticeable increase.

By inflating the 3 variables within their control to astronomical values, they were not giving any consideration to the actual market value of the ag land when added back to the equation. So the appraised value of the entire parcel, based on the County’s assumptions of the three variables within their control, was eroding any tax savings of the ag land because when adding ag land back to the parcel at fair market value, the parcel was over-valued for tax purposes.

I called the Kansas Department of Revenue division of property valuation and spoke to Mike Dallman, the field operations supervisor, to discuss my findings and concerns about rural property valuations being under attack.

He confirmed my suspicions that the Miami County Appraiser chose to use a base land valuation per acre on the algorithm of $60,000 per acre in 2023, up from $33,600 per acre in 2022.

He agreed with me that it seemed high.

He also put to rest the repeated comment we were hearing from the Miami County Appraiser and Miami County Counselor (former attorney for the State of Kansas, defending the State against disputes by homeowners and farmers.) Despite their canned response that the County must be within a 10% variance of the market values, the supervisor confirmed that Miami County was not in danger of being undervalued according to the State.

The Miami County Appraiser’s office was also telling residents they could not use valid comparable sales from other counties, but the supervisor confirmed that the Board of Tax Appeals would absolutely consider valid comps from neighboring counties.

I informed him of my research into rural farmsteads with part of the land being in ag. I asked him if during the appeal they must look at fair market value of the entire parcel, subtract the fair market value of the ag portion, and the remaining value is all the County had to work with for their three variables. He confirmed that the entire property as a whole, looking at it with the ag land at its market value, could not be higher than fair market value. If it was, the County must adjust its three variables to be at the proper market value because those three variables cannot erode the ag savings.

When taking this to appeal for my neighbor on three properties with ag, the initial small claims hearing resulted in no valuation change, ignoring valid comps provided, with a statement that the ag land was set by the State and not the County (he obviously misunderstood the evidence and the process), and a statement that the County followed Uniform Standards of Professional Appraiser Practice, the appraisal procedures as required by law.

The law requires real property to be appraised at fair market value. The algorithms and software are inflating fair market value as is the Appraiser’s $60,000 variable. The cases were continued to a Board of Tax Appeals hearing and are waiting on a hearing date, where we will continue to show the evidence of the software inflating actual market value along with valid comps proving the real values.

When asked, Mr. Dallman told me that the State uses Marshall & Swift appraisal software and he stated it was pretty much the only software available across the country.

This brings me to my third and possibly most important concern – AntiTrust violations and price fixing.

Marshall & Swift was purchased by CoreLogic in 2014, setting up what I believe to be an AntiTrust violation by putting the valuations of the 3 major costs of homeownership – mortgage, insurance, and taxes – in the hands of one company that “could” manipulate data with algorithms, and the public would never know.

One of the complaints during public hearings was “outsiders coming in and overpaying” causing locals to no longer afford homeownership. While the sentiment was made that we can’t stop people, nor do they want to stop people, from moving into the County, why were these 2020 – 2022 inflated values being validated by the mortgage company appraisals and funded fully instead of the banks telling buyers if they want to pay over market value and list prices, then they need to do so out of their pockets?

If one company owns all of the appraisals for all three major industries involved in the homeownership process, then there’s really no independent third-party keeping a check-and-balance on runaway inflation – inflation that homeowners fear will put the ability of homeownership only in the hands of investors such as BlackRock or foreign adversaries, and not in the hands of individuals who are priced out of the market because their wages no longer allow them to qualify for a home purchase, a tipping point that we seem to have reached in 2023 according to the chart below.

This type of perceived conflict of interest, potential collusion, possible conspiracy to fix prices, or “coincidence” could destroy private property rights and homeownership, setting up the UN Agenda 2030 and Klaus Schwab’s plan of “you’ll own nothing and be happy” one world agenda or China’s statement that they would infiltrate and take over the USA without ever firing a shot.

As tax valuations increase, homeowners are faced with additional expenses in home insurance valuations that must also increase so that homeowners are not put in a position of being underinsured, meaning a claim would not fully be paid if a home did not have enough insurance on it – which continues to profit the insurance companies, BlackRock and other companies’ investments with increased premiums and higher stock prices.

Who is CoreLogic?

As I researched CoreLogic, their name continually appeared everywhere. When looking at my County property tax bills, I noticed they sent a copy to my mortgage company, addressed to CoreLogic.

CoreLogic is not my lender.

When applying for a mortgage loan with a different bank, the paperwork sent from the bank also showed CoreLogic involved in the process.

If Realtors were just hit with a 1.8 BILLION dollar verdict for AntiTrust violations of alleged price fixing on real estate commissions that sellers signed agreeing to, then how much more dangerous is the potential to price fix across multiple industries of one company, CoreLogic, in control of algorithms and software that homeowners are not authorizing; yet are being forced to accept by States and Counties blindly accepting their conclusions as fact?

CoreLogic was purchased by Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners, and is no longer publicly traded.

Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners have executives who used to work for BlackRock.
I understand the financial industry is large, and these things can be coincidental, but a Director for BlackRock would be well aware of their ESG and global agendas and can easily carry that mindset into another company.

And of course no Global Agenda would be complete without a little Climate Change sprinkled in, and Insight Partners, co-owner of CoreLogic, has a climate solution software to go alongside everything else they are influencing. That’s not surprising since their Managing Director is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and they also have former BlackRock employees.

Although County Commissioners state they have no authority over property valuations, claiming to be “agents of the state” responsible for implementing State law, a term that appears to be coming from the Kansas Association of Counties.

The number one role of County Commissioners is that as elected representatives of the people, taking an oath and holding a bond to be responsible for protecting and upholding the Constitution and protecting the Citizens’ Constitutional rights.

Our country was founded on protection of our unalienable rights, including property rights as addressed in both the 5th and 14th Amendments.

5th Amendment – “no person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

14th Amendment – “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

AntiTrust violations that tax property owners out of their homes would definitely be a deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process.

Instead of elected officials pointing fingers at each other, County Commissioners, State Representatives, and State Senators across the State on both sides of the aisle should start demanding accountability and transparency in this software situation, requesting the Attorney General to investigate and join with Attorneys General across the nation in prosecuting and forbidding these potential AntiTrust violations.

If home sellers in a few states were awarded $1.8 billion over commission fixing, how much more are property owners across the country owed for this conflict and inflation that is costing each individual thousands of dollars more every year and even pricing some out of the market and their homes altogether?

Contact your representatives and the Attorney General.

Demand Accountability and Protection of our Constitutional Rights!

Demand transparency and an independent system that is not influenced by outside interests and the global agenda.

Kansas Statute References

79-411. Determination of fair market value in money of real property; appraisal and assessment of real property. The appraiser from actual view and inspection or from statistical methods prescribed by the director of property valuation, from consultation with the owner or agent thereof if expedient and from such other sources of information as are within the appraiser’s reach, shall determine as nearly as is practicable the fair market value in money of all taxable real property within the county and assess the same as required in K.S.A. 79-1439, and amendments thereto.

79-1439. Appraisal of real and tangible personal property at fair market value in money; exceptions; rate of assessment. (a) All real and tangible personal property which is subject to general ad valorem taxation shall be appraised uniformly and equally as to class and, unless otherwise specified herein, shall be appraised at its fair market value, as defined in K.S.A. 79-503a, and amendments thereto.

79-501. Appraisal of real and tangible personal property at fair market value in money; exceptions; rate of assessment. Each parcel of real property shall be appraised at its fair market value in money, the value thereof to be determined by the appraiser from actual view and inspection of the property. The price at which such real property would sell at forced sale may be taken as a criterion of such fair market value in money in the market place of such sale if the appraiser believes such price to be a reasonable factor in arriving at fair market value. The price at which real property would sell at auction may be taken as the criterion of fair market value in money if the appraiser determines such sale to be an arms-length transaction between a willing buyer and seller. In addition, land devoted to agricultural use shall be valued as provided by K.S.A. 79-1476, and amendments thereto. 

79-503a. Fair market value defined; allowable variance; factors to be considered in determining fair market value; generally accepted appraisal procedures and standards to be utilized. “Fair market value” means the amount in terms of money that a well informed buyer is justified in paying and a well informed seller is justified in accepting for property in an open and competitive market, assuming that the parties are acting without undue compulsion. In the determination of fair market value of any real property which is subject to any special assessment, such value shall not be determined by adding the present value of the special assessment to the sales price. For the purposes of this definition it will be assumed that consummation of a sale occurs as of January 1.

Sales in and of themselves shall not be the sole criteria of fair market value but shall be used in connection with cost, income and other factors including but not by way of exclusion:

(a) The proper classification of lands and improvements;

(b) the size thereof;

(c) the effect of location on value;

(d) depreciation, including physical deterioration or functional, economic or social obsolescence;

(e) cost of reproduction of improvements;

(f) productivity taking into account all restrictions imposed by the state or federal government and local governing bodies, including, but not limited to, restrictions on property rented or leased to low income individuals and families as authorized by section 42 of the federal internal revenue code of 1986, as amended;

(g) earning capacity as indicated by lease price, by capitalization of net income or by absorption or sell-out period;

(h) rental or reasonable rental values or rental values restricted by the state or federal government or local governing bodies, including, but not limited to, restrictions on property rented or leased to low income individuals and families, as authorized by section 42 of the federal internal revenue code of 1986, as amended;

(i) sale value on open market with due allowance to abnormal inflationary factors influencing such values;

(j) restrictions or requirements imposed upon the use of real estate by the state or federal government or local governing bodies, including zoning and planning boards or commissions, and including, but not limited to, restrictions or requirements imposed upon the use of real estate rented or leased to low income individuals and families, as authorized by section 42 of the federal internal revenue code of 1986, as amended; and

(k) comparison with values of other property of known or recognized value. The assessment-sales ratio study shall not be used as an appraisal for appraisal purposes.

The appraisal process utilized in the valuation of all real and tangible personal property for ad valorem tax purposes shall conform to generally accepted appraisal procedures and standards which are consistent with the definition of fair market value unless otherwise specified by law.