The Property Council is continuing investigations into the latest round of unimproved capital valuations, that show great disparity in the treatment of property valuations.
Through an FOI request, the Property Council has now gained access to the 'basis document' which is used by the State Valuation Service in setting annual UCVs for the Brisbane CBD.
The documents made available through this process will be used by the Property Council in further examining the particulars of the handful of sales upon which the CBD revaluations are based and whether the revised UCVs can be supported by market evidence.
In particular there are concerns that the revaluations for the entire CBD have been based upon a small number of sales - evidence also of the slow moving commercial market - which are not necessarily representative of the market as a whole, and a change in the City Plan's treatment of the upper end of Adelaide Street.
As a result, the revaluations appear to be geographically erratic with some parts of the central city experiencing increases of close to 200% while other parts have shown no change at all.
The Property Council is also continuing to collect data on increases in UCVs compared to capital increases and the underlying inflationary rate in response to member concerns that statutory charges, which are based on UCVs, have increased disproportionately to controllable outgoings.
The Property Council has drawn attention to the inequality of the nexus between UCVs and land tax and general rates in its pre-budget submission to the State Government.
It has also called upon the Brisbane City Council to reduce the CBD's share of rates compared to the residential sector and reintroduce the 5% discount for the early payment of rates.
These issues will all be raised with the Minister for Natural Resources when the Property Council meets with him in late June.
