It’s property assessment time, and Leelanau County Equalization Director Laurie Spencer is working with township assessors assure proper equalized values for real and personal property throughout the county. By the second Monday in April, Spencer will prepare a report that recommends the equalized value of each class of real and personal property for each local unit and present it to the County Board of Commissioners.

Under statues and guidelines established by the State Tax Commission, Spencer performs studies of sales and appraisals by class within each township, to provide a fair system of property assessment and taxation.

“To help the Board of Commissioners equalize property tax assessments; we go out to the townships and take a sampling of parcels and set the assessed value at 50% of true cash value of the property,” Spencer says. “My study is a projection of value based on a sampling from each township.”

Here are some key stats Spencer shared as part of Leelanau County’s most recent equalization study.

Residential Class is 89.11 percent of Total County Assessed Value

Commercial Class is 4.76 percent of Total County Assessed Value

Agricultural Class is 4.36 percent of Total County Assessed Value

Personal Property Class is 1.48 percent of Total County Assessed Value

Industrial Class is .29 percent of Total County Assessed Value

From April 2017 to March 2019, there were 34 residential sales over $1 million in Leelanau County.

These are the average property sale prices by Leelanau zip code from April 2017 to March 2019:

#1 49654 $596,413

#2 49636 $458,435

#3 49670 $379,687

#4 49653 $369,090

#5 49682 $323,636

#6 49630 $313,229

#7 49684 $310,176

#8 49674 $282,625

#9 49664 $278,436

#10 49621 $217,981

Among Michigan’s 83 counties, Leelanau County had the highest average taxable value for residential properties in 2018, and Lake County had the lowest. Residential parcels in Leelanau had an average taxable value of $122,270 in 2018. Also in the top five: Washtenaw ($106,007), Oakland ($98,524), Livingston ($97,367) and Emmet ($96,522).