Building on the Tax Base; Construction, Prime Locations and Fewer Subprime Mortgages Push Arlington's Overall Assessments Up Despite a Slumping Economy
When Arlington's assessor released numbers recently showing that the county had healthier-than-expected finances, one reason was Obidio Gonzales.</br></br>Despite the recession and sagging home values, he and hundreds of other construction workers stayed busy in Arlington last year on a host of commercial and residential projects. Those emerging buildings, such as the Residence Inn near the Courthouse Metro station where Obidio strung cable in icy winds late last month, are what nudged the county's tax base up this year.</br></br>The increase was a scant 0.4 percent, but the performance helped cut the county's projected budget deficit from $40 million to $35 million and gave county officials some moderately good news in a region where the effects of the downturn have been felt unevenly.</br></br>"It's a relatively healthy real estate market, from what I know about surrounding areas," said Tommy Rice, the county's director of real estate assessments. "There are still some cranes in Arlington."</br></br>The construction helped offset the effects -- on the county government's finances, if not on individual homeowners -- of the national recession and sagging property values locally. The value of the average single-family house in Arlington dropped, on average, 2 percent in the assessments for this year, to $520,100. That follows a dramatic rise in values through much of the decade.