Roughly one in 12 Cole County property owners saw increases on their real estate values this year, and about the same number saw decreases.
The Cole County Board of Equalization held what turned out to be its only hearings for this year on Friday.
Seven commercial land owners and one private land owner had their cases heard before the commission, and the commission upheld the county assessor's values in each case.
The board is made of the three county commissioners and two at-large members who are in real estate, banking or construction, so they have some involvement in the housing industry.
If a property is in the Jefferson City limits, then two members of the city staff sit in on the hearing.
They all vote on evidence presented, and it takes a simple majority for a matter to be decided.
The county clerk and assessor are also on the board, but don't vote.
"Once I certify values on July 1, by statue I can't change a property value for 2015," said Cole County Assessor Chris Estes.
Those who want to continue the appeals process can now take their case to the state tax commission and, if they want, all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court.
Those who saw an increase got a notice from the assessor's office earlier this year. Of the total 34,004 real estate parcels in Cole County, 3,786 saw an assessment increase.
Of those increases, 20 percent were raised because of new construction, additions or remodeling.
There were 1,683 parcels that decreased in value, while 28,535 saw no change.
"The biggest increases were on agricultural property," Estes said. "The state tax commission sets the market value or taxation value of all agriculture land in Missouri. That goes to the Missouri Senate, and if they want to stop an increase, they have to pass a resolution. No resolution made it through this session, so the increase went into effect. It had been 10 years since agriculture values went up. Agriculture land has eight levels of value. In Cole County, the highest level is class 2, which has a tax value of $850 an acre.
"All properties are reviewed," Estes continued. "We have computers run programs looking at a number of factors and then have appraisers check to make sure those figures are accurate. Every day we review properties."
Estes said the reactions to the reassessments are about the same as they normally see.
"Most wonder why it went up," he said. "We've heard about home values going down, but that's not really true here in this part of the country because we didn't see huge increases when other areas were going up. We haven't seen home values drop that much.
"Our office sent out notices to the property owners who saw an increase," Estes added. "If yours stayed the same or went down, then you didn't get anything from us."