Letters sent out from Marshall County Assessor Blaze Wurr to county property owners seeking information on rental income have drawn concern and criticism over the last few weeks, and during Wednesday morning’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Wurr took advantage of the public comment period to explain the reasoning behind them.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the income letters I sent out. If you are an owner-occupied business, you just need to write owner-occupied on the paperwork and send that back to me, and you will never get a letter again,” he said. “It’s not required. If you want to ignore it, you’re more than welcome to ignore it. It’s just another approach that I’m trying to do.”

He added that the income-based method for valuations is typically only utilized if a property owner takes the assessor’s office to court, but it is a tool if there are no recent comparable sales.

Bill Hobson, a rural Marshalltown resident in attendance, had several questions for Wurr, including how many other counties are utilizing such a system — Linn, Johnson and Polk were a few examples the assessor provided.

“I think there are some counties that send out information, but there’s not enough data collected to be able to use it,” Wurr said.

Hobson asked if a new law would be required to change the assessment formula from being based on market value to a rental income based system, and Wurr responded that county assessors across the state are already to utilize three different approaches — sales, cost and income.

“When property is brand new, we usually build up with the cost approach, and then, as sales happen, we use that to adjust our prices. But if there are no sales for a particular type of property or anything like that, income could be another one to build up and could typically benefit the taxpayer when there’s no sales coming through,” he said.

The income approach is also used internationally and in other states, and Wurr said both sides typically use it when an assessment is challenged in court. In response to another question from Hobson on which businesses received the letter, Wurr said it was sent to golf courses, gas stations, hotels and motels, RV parks, retail stores, apartments, condominiums and two-family duplexes.

Ultimately, Wurr conceded that he probably won’t be able to gather any useful data from the letters due to the lack of responses.

“So, are you saying don’t do it?” Hobson asked.

“If you want to, you can. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” Wurr replied.

Hobson pointed to a portion of the letter that cites a specific section of Iowa Code, 441.24, which “requires the property owner to assist the assessor in valuing their property,” but Wurr said he would “not be doing the other half of the code.”

“If I have two buildings that are sitting there side by side, identical buildings, and I have a business in one and I rent the other one, how would you value those?” Hobson asked.

Wurr replied that if there was enough data available, he could create market rents and cap rates and do everything “as a whole,” but if there are sales, Iowa is a sales state and he would have to go that route. Hobson commented that filling out the forms would require a lot of work for property owners, and Wurr reiterated that it was optional.

Board Chairman Jarret Heil said he and his fellow supervisors had received correspondence from several residents about the letters, and he felt that making it voluntary was a “win win” because in some cases, the income approach could actually be advantageous to the property owner.

“It’s great that they don’t have to (fill it out), and I think that’ll be sufficient to a lot of people that have reached out to us to know this,” Heil said.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com