wtf? is a series of posts dedicated to holding a spotlight on the mysterious and un-explainable decisions of the Hamilton County Board of Revision. Today’s example, 14 East Fourth St., is a rare and wondrous creature, an example of commercial real estate in the Central Business District where the Board of Revision has NOT been asked to intervene.
Look at it. Isn’t it sweet, so old-fashioned and petite, sitting there tucked between the re-purposed condos at 18 E. Fourth and another building just ripe for re-purposing? The 27,200 sf of finished commercial office space, 3 or more stories with an elevator, on .13 acres of land was built in 1875.
According to the Auditor’s records Jacobsen Erlend, with a mailing address in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, acquired the property in 2004 from a trust overseen by PNC Bank. (Purchase price is listed at $0 which could mean this is simply a change of legal title as opposed to an actual sale.)
The value of the property in 1996 was $1,300,000. It reached a high of $1,480,000 in 2005. And in the 2011 reappraisal and downward revision of all real estate properties in Hamilton County the value was lowered slightly to $1,287,760.
This is the only one of the more than 50 properties I’ve spot-checked in the CBD where the value has not been significantly reduced and the only property I checked that has never filed a complaint with the Board of Revision. Since it is such a small property, perhaps it is not worth the cost of paying a $500 an hour attorney as well as a professional appraiser.
