Not surprisingly, the BRT's 20 and 40 percent estimates fall short of reality.
Axelrod-Giannascoli Realty is a storefront at 410-12 South St. The partners paid $2.65 million for it last year, but the BRT now says it's worth $350,000, unchanged for at least 20 years.
Under AVI, the tax value would be $490,000 - still less than a fifth of the purchase price.
Owner Stephen Giannascoli, a developer and property manager, said the BRT's assessments didn't seem to follow any rational pattern.
"It's a roll of the dice," he said.
Ammunition from AVI
In some cases, the new proposed numbers could come to haunt the BRT. Several lawyers said the AVI numbers, flawed or not, could come in handy when owners appeal for lower taxes.
Mescolotto shrugged that off, saying he didn't believe the AVI numbers would count for much: "They are preliminary and deserve to be treated as such."
But the numbers already are in play.
Consider the old Byberry Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, now a home-development site. The BRT said the average value for the 398 parcels should be $18,749 each. The owner, Westrum Development Co., sued, saying it should be $8,417.
Under AVI, most of those parcels would be dramatically cut - to about $5,000 each.
Lawyer Peter Kelsen reacted with a shocked expletive when told about the drop, saying he had been battling the BRT for months to cut the Byberry values.
"That's outrageous," he said. But after rethinking it, he saw the bright side.
In July, Kelsen filed a brief using the AVI projections to bolster his argument.
"It confirms what we've been saying all along," he said. "They don't have value right."
To read The Inquirer's three-part series "Tax Travesty" and other recent articles on the Board of Revision of Taxes, and to look up the new and current values for nearly any city property, visit http://go.philly.com/brt
Contact staff writer Mark Fazlollah
at 215-854-5831 or mfazlollah@phillynews.com.
