While Downtown Goes Up, Your Neighborhood Goes Down

It's no secret that property values throughout Greensboro and the rest of the nation have fallen dramatically in recent years and yet the owners of the proposed sites for the downtown Greensboro performing arts center are still asking premium prices for the properties they've agreed to sell. George Hartzman, who teaches CPA continuing ed, financial ethics and is a financial adviser., sends me the following prices of 4 properties in Greensboro before and after the real estate crash.

Old Value: $198,400
New Value: $192,000 - About 3% less?

Old Value: $269,300
New Value: $226,400 - 15% less?

Old Value: $6,258,500
New Value: $4,090,500 - About 35% off?
About Six $190,000 houses?

Old Value: $6,637,600
New Value: $5,704,800 - Down about 14%?

Why should the citizens of all of Greensboro's working class neighborhoods be forced to pay inflated prices to but the land needed to build a downtown performing arts center when the shopping center in the little green circle is bigger than any of the proposed sites and already belongs to the City of Greensboro?

Think about it: That little green circle is costing you money every day it remains unused.

George says you can learn more by using the Guilford County GIS Data Viewer

Click on Parcel Search in the upper right hand side of the page linked above.

Enter number and street, without "drive" or "court" after
and then click search.

Click on Tax Appraisal Information on the right hand side
and a new window will come up.

The new tax value is in the bottom right corner.

Click on Tax bill in the upper right area,
which should open a new window.

Clicking on the top link with lots of numbers under the headings on the left
should bring up another window with the old value in the middle on the left.

Divide.

Subtract.

Compare.

Continue to article #61. Performing Arts Task Force Says Downtown Might Not Be Best Location.