Real-Estate Roulette

Although the BRT is technically outside his purview, Mayor Nutter said in an interview Friday that "the current system just doesn't work." As a councilman, he had called for the board to be abolished. He now says that the agency can right itself, but that the system "needs to be changed yesterday."

The most famous beneficiary of the BRT muddle has been State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo. City evaluators had put a market value of $250,000, and an assessment of $80,000, on his 27-room Spring Garden mansion - even as he tried to sell it for $6 million. This year, after a bombardment of publicity, the board revalued his home at $953,000, raising the assessment to $305,000. His bill will bounce from $6,611 to $25,205 by next year.

In April, the BRT said it was reexamining more than 500 other high-end properties for errors.

But that may be another violation of state law, which prohibits selective, or "spot," reassessments.

"That's the way I see it," said Joseph Bright, a Center City lawyer and tax specialist. "I've taken the statute, and I've turned it sideways and upside-down. The case law is very clear."

BRT spokesman Kevin Feeley said no law had been broken. "The board feels it has acted fairly and uniformly," he said last week.

Fumo and other owners of the targeted properties have argued that assessments are out of whack everywhere in the city.

And they are.

Door-to-door inequity

Eight years ago, she and her husband, Edward, bought a three-story rowhouse in the 2300 block of St. Albans Street, where it sits amid similar homes fronted by a brick courtyard and a garden.

Judging from sales data, St. Albans residents are enjoying quite a bargain. On average, homes on the block have sold in recent years for $425,000. Yet the city says they are worth $65,000. That would compute to an 85 percent tax savings equaling $9,520 per property. Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson, for instance, pays $1,893 on her corner home - one of the higher bills on the block.

Inexplicably, assessors valued the Parsleys' house at $350,000, translating into a tax bill of $9,200. The Parsleys appealed to the BRT and won a temporary reduction, but their house still carries the highest assessment on the block.

"It's completely nonuniform and random," said Lisa Parsley, a psychiatric nurse.

The Parsleys are neither poor nor elderly, but many of the city's overassessed homeowners are. And they haven't the energy or the resources to fight the tax man, 78-year-old Marcel Pratt points out.

"They don't want to complain," he said. "They just want to live their days out."

Pratt lives next to a trash-strewn lot on Farson Street in West Philadelphia, near the 52d Street stop of the wall-shaking Market-Frankford El. Assessors say his tiny home is worth $15,000, which he believes is more than anyone would pay. What mystifies him, he said, is why the assessments are similar on almost every building on the block, including ones that sold in recent years for $52,000, $72,000 and $150,000.

The assessors, Pratt said, "should be ashamed of themselves."

Evaluations out of touch

In short: a rocketing housing market versus deskbound assessors.

The 67 city evaluators are each responsible for about 8,600 properties. But unlike mortgage-company appraisers, they inspect the interiors of only 10 percent of the houses and spend two days a week looking at exteriors, said Mescolotto of the BRT.