You may call it the price of progress.

Warren County Property Valuation Administrator Bob Branstetter and county Treasurer Greg Burrell prefer to see it as further assurance that Warren County property tax rates won’t be increasing anytime soon.

Warren County residents have been receiving 2018 real estate assessment notices in recent days, and some residents might be surprised to see how much their property’s value has increased.

Branstetter said his office has been doing its quadrennial assessments of property. Fueled by the county’s explosive growth and a red-hot real estate market, those assessments could cause sticker shock for some county residents.

Some of those notices carry increases in assessed value of 10 percent or more, meaning property owners will be getting bigger tax bills later this year even though the county’s real property tax rate of 14.5 cents per $100 of assessed value hasn’t increased in more than a decade.

“Property values have gone up in Warren County by more than 3 percent per year for several years,” Branstetter said. “Last year the increase was around 10 percent.”

That translates to those hefty hikes in assessed value that have been arriving in the mail. Branstetter said those notices give residents an opportunity, if they don’t agree with the assessment, to have a conference with a PVA staff member and possibly file an appeal.

Branstetter said the deadline to have a conference is May 16 and the deadline to file an appeal to the three-member appeals board is May 17. Despite the increases in assessed values this year, Branstetter isn’t expecting a lot of appeals out of the more than 13,000 assessment notices his office sent out.

“Normally, we have less than a dozen appeals each year,” he said.

The increases that are showing up on the assessment notices this year could prompt a few more appeals, but Branstetter said the hikes in value are part of living in the fastest-growing area in the state.

“A lot of people don’t realize how much real estate has gone up,” he said.

The PVA’s office uses an inflation calculator produced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and data from real estate sales in the county.

“We go by sales of similar properties in the neighborhood,” Branstetter said. “The whole thing is to try to be fair and equitable to everybody.”

Branstetter said his office also uses a computer database and aerial photography to confirm square footage of homes and to determine if improvements have been made to homes. “The more references you get, the better off you are,” he said.

The assessments made by Branstetter’s office, while maybe hitting some residents in the pocketbook, are a boon for Burrell and his efforts to keep the county budget in line.

He said the county’s revenue from property taxes has grown from less than $10.7 million in 2014 to nearly $12.4 million this year.

“We’re seeing about a quarter-million dollars in growth each year without raising rates,” Burrell said. “The surrounding counties are not experiencing that type of real estate growth.

“It has been good for us to be able to experience that growth and not have to raise taxes.”

– Follow business reporter Don Sergent on Twitter @BGDNbusiness or visit bgdailynews.com.