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2022 Property Values for Marshall Fire Destroyed and Damaged Properties

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The Boulder County Assessor’s Office is working to assist county residents reach a temporary fair market value for any home or real property that is destroyed or damaged by the Marshall Fire. The deadline to appeal is June 1.

Destroyed Properties

Property values, which are used to determine annual property tax payments, have been adjusted downward to reflect the destruction to a physical residence.

The land values on destroyed properties will hold their value based on the condition on Jan. 1, 2022.

Constructed buildings will be re-evaluated next year, 2023, and adjusted according to:

• how much land and improvement impact there is
• whether a destroyed building is being or has been rebuilt
• whether the property has suffered significant market impact

These properties will be reevaluated at the beginning of each subsequent year until they have recovered.

Rebuilding

For property owners considering taking more time to rebuild on their lot, state laws allow the Boulder County Assessor to keep the residential classification in place for the property even if the structure hasn’t been rebuilt for up to two years after the year of destruction.

In these cases, the residential land classification (which equates to a lower tax rate) remains in place for at least two subsequent property tax years, and up to five subsequent tax years if the assessor determines there is evidence the owner intends to rebuild or locate a residential improvement on the land.

Damaged Properties

The Boulder County Assessor guidelines for value reduction are based on the amount of damage to the structure and estimates of the cost to cure the damage.

Land values will hold their value based on the condition on Jan. 1, 2022. Constructed buildings may have been adjusted in value to reflect impacts caused by the fire.

The reduction in property value for damage structures (resulting in a reduction of 2022 taxes) has been calculated.

Damaged properties will be re-evaluated next year, 2023, and adjusted according to how much land and improvement impact there is and whether the property has suffered significant market impact. These properties will be reevaluated at the beginning of each subsequent year until they have recovered.

Damage Adjustment Explanation

The dark area on this map is the fire boundary.

Within and outside the fire boundary, the fire destroyed and damaged homes in a random pattern, as embers from one burning structure or tree jumped great distances. If you zoom in, you can see the affected properties.

• RED properties were determined to be destroyed by the fire after initial inspections by emergency teams and Boulder County staff.
• YELLOW properties were determined to be damaged by the fire, with considerable damage to the structures.
• DARK BLUE properties were initially determined to be unaffected by the fire. However, this determination was based on initial surveys and does not reflect damage that Assessor Office teams may not have seen or as explained below, damage from intrusion of smoke, soot, char, ash, and odor.

Click on the map below to enlarge and interact – pan and zoom the map using a mouse and the buttons on the map. Search by address in the top left.

Damage from Intrusion of Smoke, Soot, Char, Ash and Odor

Along with fire damage to structures, many suffered from intrusion of smoke, soot, char, ash and odor. To address this, the Assessor’s Office reached out to property owners who self-reported damage by sending out a survey requesting additional information about the damage.

The dots on the map are the results of this survey:

• RED indicates high cost of repairs estimated by owners
• DARK BLUE indicates the lowest cost of repairs estimated by owners

The pattern of damage outside of the fire perimeter is consistent with winds traveling from the southwest.

The survey data provided an incomplete picture – only some property owners reported the damage (the colored dots in the map).

Click on the map below to enlarge and interact.

Because not all impacted properties were accounted for in the survey, an estimate of smoke damage was created for all homes in the Marshall Fire impacted area. To do this, an Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) analysis was performed.

The IDW model creates a “surface” based on the distance from addresses where property owners reported their estimated cost of damage (shown in black lines with letters below).

For homes without reported information (shown in grey lines with numbers), an estimate of cost of damage was created based on where they fit on the model.

For example, in the map above:

• Property A – the estimated repair cost for property A is high. This property was reported to the County.
• Property 1 – this property did not report the cost of repairs, but due to its proximity (on the map) to property A, the estimated repair cost is almost identical.
• Property 2 – this property did not report the cost of repairs. It is located between properties A and B, therefore the IDW curve estimates the cost of repairs to be roughly halfway between these two known costs.

Learn more about how IDW works.

The average (mean) cost of repairs for each parcel in the Marshall Fire impacted area was used to estimate the amount of smoke, soot, char, ash, and odor damaged adjustment for that property.

The black parcels are homes that were reported as destroyed. As such, we considered their damages and property values differently (see 2022 Property Values above).