Court Opinion

ID: 9762262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:18:05.911759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:32.488340
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Although the contract at issue mandates that appellees may purchase appellant’s property at “the market value of the premises according to the assessment rolls as maintained by the County of Warren .. .,” it is by no means clear that $7,820 is the price which appellees should pay.
The omission from the contract of a specific future purchase price was intentional because, according to the draftsman, the parties “wanted to reflect either increase or decrease of the assessed value as of [the] time” of appellees’ exercise of the option to buy. To assure the accuracy and currency of this “reflection” of the change in assessed value, the parties provided that “the date of valuation shall be that upon which the said Steuarts notify said McChesneys, in writing, of the existence of a Bona Fide purchaser.”
Written notice of appellant’s receipt of an offer for the property was delivered to appellees on or about October 25, 1977. At that time, the assessed value of the property, as recorded on the tax rolls of Warren County, was $3,910, or 50% of the “market value” of $7,820. However, from the testimony of the draftsman, it would appear that the property had not been reassessed since 1972, when the assessed value was increased by only $405.
Section 602 of the Fourth to Eighth Class County Assessment Law provides:
“It shall be the duty of the chief assessor to assess, rate and value all subjects and objects of local taxation . . . according to the actual value thereof .... [R]eal proper*56ty shall be assessed at a value based upon an established predetermined ratio .. . not exceeding seventy-five per centum (75%) of its actual value or the price for which the same would separately bona fide sell. .. . ”
72 P.S. § 5453.602(a) (1964). As this Court stated in Brooks Building Tax Assessment Case, 391 Pa. 94, 97, 137 A.2d 273, 274 (1958),
“[t]he term ‘actual value’ means ‘market value’ [citing cases]. And market value has been defined as the price which a purchaser, willing but not obliged to buy, would pay an owner, willing but not obliged to sell, taking into consideration all uses to which the property is adapted and might in reason be applied.”
Accord, Buhl Foundation v. Board of Property Assessment, 407 Pa. 567, 570, 180 A.2d 900, 902 (1962).
Here, where appellant received bona fide offers of $30,000, $35,000, and $50,000 for her property, there can be no doubt that the actual value of appellant’s property in 1977 was at least four times greater than the value according to the outdated assessment on the Warren County tax rolls. It is the height of unfairness to grant appellees’ requested decree for specific performance at a price based on a valuation which took place in 1972. In effect, appellees are receiving a substantial windfall simply because Warren County has apparently failed to maintain accurate assessments “according to the actual value” of appellant's property, as required by law.
In these circumstances, I would remand this case to the Court of Common Pleas of Warren County for a determination of what the proper assessed value of appellant’s property would have been on October 25, 1977, the “date of valuation,” with directions to enter a decree of specific performance in favor of appellees at a “market value” based upon that determination.
LARSEN, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.