By Kylie Marsh
Kylie.marsh@triangletribune.com
While homeownership is out of reach for many North Carolinians, skyrocketing property taxes are displacing longtime owners.
In some N.C. counties, owners of lower-priced housing are paying proportionately double compared to owners of more expensive homes, according to the Wake County Property Tax Justice Working Group.
“Nationwide, there has been a massive problem where Black folks, in particular, and other people of color are being undervalued when they go to sell or refinance their home,” Rob Stephens, a member of the Working Group, said.
The coalition of organizations, including the NAACP, Men of Southeast Raleigh, Southeast Raleigh Promise, the North Carolina Housing Coalition and others, assembled in 2024. The group has worked across the Triangle to educate cost-burdened homeowners about local property tax relief programs and assist them in applying. On average, the Working Group helped homeowners save $60,000 in in property taxes.
During its first virtual gathering on May 14, group members discussed the inequities in property tax assessment, its impact on low-income homeowners, current relief programs and recommendations for expansion of those programs. “What we’re seeing in transitioning and gentrifying Black neighborhoods is that the tax value is ahead of the actual value,” Stephens said. “Black folks are subsidizing gentrification fundamentally.”
Stephens presented slides comparing values between renovated homes purchased by investors and put on the market as short-term rentals and Airbnb versus homes owned by long-term Black residents. A five-bedroom three-bathroom home purchased and renovated by an investor in 2022 for $350,000 was assessed at $260,000, compared to a three-bedroom one-bath home owned by a Black resident valued at $260,000 in 2024.
Stephens said the family who used to live in the five-bedroom home was displaced due to overdue taxes. “What often happens is that city of Raleigh home repairs were being considered remodeled,” he said.
These repairs are an anti-displacement measure, like accessibility accommodations for aging and disabled populations. “Having a handicap-accessible shower does not increase the value of the house,” Stephens said. “While they’re nice renovations, they’re not the marble countertops, open concept that developers are doing.”
At the same time, some of the highest-priced homes in Raleigh are being undervalued. One home sold for $5 million in 2023 was only valued at $4.2 million. Another sold for $3.2 million had a tax value of $2.2 million.
When this data was presented to the Wake County Tax Office, it conducted its own analysis, resulting in a reduction in the values of over 580 properties across six historically Black communities, saving those families $500,000. Over 225 Southeast Raleigh residents were mobilized, filing around 75 appeals.
“We did not agree completely with some of the reductions, but it was a great precedent,” Stephens said, “because now we can say this is something you can do everywhere.” Getting this property tax relief is a way to protect generational wealth for Black families, he said.
“It’s a tragedy that it’s being sucked out of Black neighborhoods unjustly, and we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
While Durham, Orange, Mecklenburg, Buncombe and Chatham counties all offer property tax relief programs as anti-displacement measures, Wake County doesn’t. Stephens said this is why strengthening partnerships with the local tax office is crucial.
Sarah Stohler of Raleigh Village East, an aging-in-place group, is one of the volunteers of the Working Group. “One of the things we’ve discovered is that maintaining your home is one of the greatest challenges to staying in your home as you retire,” Stohler said.
There are a few relief programs available for homeowners above the age of 65 or completely disabled.
The Homestead Exemption can cut property taxes in half for those making less than $38,800 annually. The Circuit Breaker exemption is also available to homeowners over the age of 65 or completely disabled, requiring only a percentage of their income to be paid in property taxes. It defers property tax payment for three years and has an income limit of $58,200. The Disabled Veterans Exemption applies to all disabled veterans and has no income limit.
“The biggest problem is most people don’t know about these programs, so we’ve got to be evangelical,” Stohler said.
Owners looking to file appeals in Wake County must do so by June 1. Those seeking assistance can contact wcpropertytaxjustice@gmail.com for more information.
Still, the income limits include joint income sources, and these programs are not available to everyone. Hudson Vaughan of the North Carolina Housing Coalition is another member of the Working Group. He says that expansion of the Circuit Breaker Expansion could impact more cost-burdened families with a few tweaks, like expanding eligibility to be based on area median income.
“There are some pretty clear state improvements that we’ve been advocating for,” Vaughan said. For example, the Circuit Breaker exemption is heavily underutilized because of the deferment clause, requiring homeowners to pay the taxes after three years if they sell the home. On the flip side, if homeowners remain in their homes for 10 or 20 years, they are only required to pay those three deferred years’ taxes.
Heirs of property owners are not eligible. Removing deferment, the age floor and allowing heirs are “pretty simple changes that would literally reach tens of thousands of families across North Carolina,” Vaughan said.
At the state level, legislators are working on tax reforms, like a “levy limit,” and a moratorium on property tax reassessment in nine counties. The levy limit, if passed, will need to be approved by voters through a ballot measure come November. But Vaughan said it’s “a political trick.”
While a limit on property taxes sounds good in theory, Vaughan says the levy limits would take more from low-income and working-class families, while giving big tax breaks on high-valued properties.
“This can hamstring local governments when deficit projections are significant,” he said. “This can lead to significant cuts in public services, and increased reliance on fees and other less transparent revenue sources. This is not an option that North Carolina municipalities have,” Vaughan said.
Families that are already cost-burdened will not benefit in the long run, compared to the Working Group’s AMI-based relief proposals. “It will lower the overall property tax revenue increases year to year,” he said, “but for an actual homeowner, especially a low- to moderate-income house, it will actually have very little savings.”
To illustrate the point, Vaughan showed a table that compared the savings under the proposed levy limit to the Working Group’s expansion recommendations. A single elderly homeowner living in Rochester Heights with an income of $50,000 and a tax bill of $2,200 would only receive $175 in relief under the levy limit.
At the same time, the owner of a luxury building in North Hills would receive $125,000 in relief, compared to $0 under the Working Group’s relief program.
“We are not going to be fooled. We want real relief,” Vaughan said. “We want it to really reach folks in Wake County who deserve it, and this is not that.”
