The N.C. General Assembly's pushback against property tax increases continued this week, with the N.C. House of Representatives voting to approve a bill limiting revaluations in nine counties that were set to take effect this year.
Senate Bill 889 will now head to Gov. Josh Stein. Its second reading passed Tuesday with 72 votes, the threshold needed to override a Stein veto, with five Democrats and an unaffiliated representative joining every Republican present.
Reappraisals are a key part of property tax bills, along with tax rates. The reappraisals determine the value of the property that is being taxed, while the rate determines how much should be charged for each $100 in value.
"Remember, a house is a very illiquid asset — real property. The property tax must be paid in cash, the most liquid of assets. So there's a lot of people who have illiquid assets that still have to come up with the cash each year to forward to county government, and then many to municipalities," Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, said on the House floor Tuesday.
The bill affects counties with populations of at least 15,000 people whose reappraisals were set to come online in 2026.
That includes Guilford, but also Anson, Bladen, Buncombe, Davidson, Harnett, Onslow, Pender and Scotland counties. The three counties with populations of less than 15,000 people that were omitted were Chowan, Clay and Pamlico counties.
Democratic members of the Guilford County delegation warned that passing the bill could throw a budget process that is already well underway into chaos. State law requires local governments to pass their budgets by the end of June.
Guilford County reassessed its properties this year, with many seeing significant increases in their assessed value. The median increase of a residential property's assessed value, for instance, increased by about 65%, from $171,600 to $283,700.
In turn, the county has proposed a budget that decreases the property tax rate from 73.05 cents per $100 of assessed value to 61.90 cents per $100 of assessed value — a rate that still brings in additional value than the county raised from property tax revenue last year.
Rep. Amos Quick, D-Guilford, said that passing the reappraisal moratorium would have a slew of impacts on his home county, starting with what he said would be "crippling" the Guilford County School system. Quick also warned that pausing the reappraisal would prevent Guilford County from giving raises to its law enforcement personnel and first responders, while reducing the county's budget for rural fire districts.
"It will give an appearance of action that's really not the action that taxpayers are asking for," Quick said Wednesday, adding that it would "sow confusion" to taxpayers who will receive multiple bills while failing to address concerns about revaluations.
Tuesday, Rep. Brian Biggs, R-Randolph, argued that reappraisals had reached a level at which sales prices were no longer keeping up, something that he said is rare in 25 years of selling homes.
"They cannot sell their properties for the value that it currently has," Biggs said Tuesday, adding that counties need to look at how they're appraising and assessing properties.
Rep. Tracy Clark, D-Guilford, noted Tuesday that the General Assembly, which has not passed a comprehensive budget since 2023, is now upending budget processes that typically began in January.
"Despite failing at delivering a budget for our entire growing state, we are now forcing counties to stop months of work that they have dutifully undertaken to pass their own budgets on time," Clark said.
Pausing the reappraisal could, Clark said, result in as much as $58 million being removed from the Guilford County Schools budget for 2026-27.
Tuesday, Rep. Lindsey Prather, D-Buncombe, tried to have that county removed from the effort to pause revaluations, citing the widespread damage from 2024's Hurricane Helene.
A separate bill that started moving through the House on Wednesday will exempt Buncombe from the reappraisal moratorium.
