A. The city re-evaluates home assessments every year, but it is not planning a special assessment to reflect any real or perceived drop in home values recently.

Whether homes are selling for "far below their assessed value" also seems to depend on where you live and what can be considered "far below."

From 2007 to 2008, the change in market value based on single-family-home sales in the 112 neighborhoods the city looks at ranged from a decrease of about 3 percent to an increase of about 5 percent. For the city as a whole, there was an increase in market value of about 0.8 percent.

Jo Ann Terasa, the assistant city assessor for residential properties, said that in general, the biggest factor in a home's assessment is what homes in the same neighborhood sold for the year before.

"Whatever the trend is showing, then we'll show that," she said.

So far, that trend has been less distressing than in other parts of the country, where the burst housing bubble has meant homes are worth a lot less today than they were a year or two ago.

Madison is "very economically vibrant," Terasa said, and "a little different than most areas of the state" when it comes to homes maintaining value.

Terasa said the city is hoping this year to start taking an in-depth look at each home to come up with assessments that are based more on a home's merits than on sales of homes nearby. That's a task the city undertakes every few years, she said.

Homeowners also have a monthlong window to dispute their assessments — which are used to calculate property taxes — if they think the city's number is way off. There is an administrative review to determine if the objection has merit and an appeal process if the resident doesn't like the outcome of the review.

For this cycle, the deadline for filing an objection was May 12.

— Chris Rickert

Have a question? Look for Just Ask Us on Tuesdays in the Local section. Send questions to: justaskus@madison.com; 608-252-6192; Just Ask Us, P.O. Box 8058, Madison, WI 53708.