The Valuation Office in Dublin has been given the go ahead to revalue the 25,000 commercial properties in the Dublin City Council area, for rates purposes.
This is part of a national programme to revalue all industrial and commercial property in Ireland. The programme began in the South Dublin County Council area and continued subsequently in the Fingal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council areas.
The process for Dublin City, which marks a major step in the national programme, was launched at briefings given by the Valuation Office to public representatives for business and commercial groups.
The launch follows the completion of the statutory consultation process, which requires discussions with the local authority and the Minister for the Environment.
All properties will be valued by reference to a Valuation Date of 7th April 2011. The purpose of revaluation is to bring more equity, fairness and transparency into the local authority rating system.
Following revaluation of commercial property, there will be a much closer and uniform relationship between the current annual rental values of properties – which have shifted significantly in recent times – and their commercial rates liability.
This will be the first revaluation to take place in Dublin for over 100 years and will come into effect on 1 January 2014.
Nick Rose, a chartered surveyor for RHM Commercial, said, ‘this is a challenging time to be assessing rental values given the lack of market activity and dearth of transactions. The plan is to publish draft valuations around October 2012 and give ratepayers around 12 months to make representations on why their assessment is excessive.’
Mr Rose went on to explain: ‘The Valuation Office will now commence a huge information gathering exercise and ratepayers should appoint professional advisor’s sooner rather than later to ensure that appropriate information is provided, make representations and deal with an appeal if necessary.’
Only commercial property will be affected by the revaluation, neither residential property, nor agricultural lands are rateable and consequently will not be affected by the revaluation.
