Property owners across the county will find out shortly what their property is now worth.

Monday, notices will be mailed out to every property owner, the final stage of a nearly 2-year-long tax revaluation process by the Beaufort County Tax Assessor’s office.

Overall, it’s good news, according to Bill Putney, project supervisor with Pearson’s Appraisal Service.

“Last spreadsheet that we did, overall the county was down about 4.3 percent. When we started, it was 5- to 6-percent high.” Putney said. “You have three things: some go up, some go down, some stay the same. And it’s always that way. Always.”

The revaluation occurs every eight years and is based on real estate market value. For example, average real-estate sale prices in Washington Park increased 4.5 percent and in Washington by 1.83 percent, but in Aurora, average sale prices dropped by 7.3 percent. The revaluation also takes into account whether additions have been built on to a structure and any new outbuildings.

Beaufort County has 45,241 parcels; the number increased with the latest revaluation by 74. The number of parcels changes regularly, as owners might add together parcels into one larger parcel or divide them for sale.

Over the past two years, seven appraisers with the Virginia and North Carolina based Pearson’s have fanned out over the county, putting eyes on properties and feeding information into the Denali system.

“We’ve got pretty good aerial photography,” Putney said. “We used the county’s aerial photos, also Google maps — and if you can’t discern it from that, we get in the car and go look.”

“The most important thing is we hope we’ve got very good values out there and that everybody will be pretty well satisfied,” said Beaufort County Tax Assessor Bobby Parker.

Parker said if people aren’t satisfied with their revaluations or have questions, the office is prepared to field appeals: starting Monday, a satellite office will be staffed with eight people, there to answer calls and spots for up to five appraisers to take a second look at the numbers, or at the property, if the need is there.

“After you’ve had your first appeal, we’ll send out a notice saying we’ve either made a change or no change. If we’ve made a change the new values will be on it,” Parker said.

If a property owner receives a “no-change” notice, then they can appeal to the county Board of Equalization; after that, to apply to have it reviewed before the board at the North Carolina Property Tax Commission in Raleigh.

“I will say most of the things get settled before it gets to the property tax commission,” Putney said.

Those looking to appeal their property’s revaluation can call the Beaufort County Tax Office at 252-946-7981, stopping by the revaluation office at 225 N. Respess St. (formerly the Horne building, entry is on the back side of the building), or filling out a form on the notice and sending it back in.

When appealing, property owners are asked to bring as much information with them as possible, such as deeds, or photos of interior damage done to structures that could affect property value but cannot be seen from outside.