Photo courtesy of Valerie Starkey
Eric Matson had tiny houses in mind when he and his wife approached Home Depot staff about turning a Tuff Shed into a second home.
Since the “Tuff Shed guy” was at the store, Matson said he and his wife viewed base models and asked if the Denver-based company — which operates a factory in Medford — could extend the overhang, add insulated windows, 2-by-6 exterior walls, a paint job and a gable fence.
The result is the 1,224 square-foot two-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-story structure at 216 Macken Avenue, which was completed in December 2023. Matson said he paid a total of $140,000. This includes $39,050 for the unit itself plus the concrete pad it sits on, the Home Depot cabinets and carpet and the Ikea island he installed as well as the plumbing.
Staff in the Del Norte County Assessor’s Office argue that Matson’s home is stick-built and, therefore, should be assessed a property tax value of $265,000 for the structure alone and $325,000 for the entire property.
On Tuesday, Matson, whose primary address is in Auburn, California, appealed to county supervisors, who were acting as the Board of Equalization, hoping to convince them otherwise.
“I have the actual costs for everything — the actual cost for the property, the actual cost of the Tuff Shed and the Tuff Shed contract to show that that’s what you would be looking at from Tuff Shed — it’s not from me,” he told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday, adding that he bought the property across the street from Foursquare Church for when he visits his son who is a doctor at Sutter Coast Hospital. “What they’re trying to do is find something that’s similar in square footage and whatever else and say, ‘This sold for that.’ They said, ‘We couldn’t find a Tuff Shed that’s been turned into a house here.’”
The Board, however, couldn’t come to a consensus on whether the county’s market value approach — that is, comparing Matson’s home to other houses in the area to determine a property tax value — was appropriate.
District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges said he felt the argument presented by Deputy County Assessor Brantley Cobb and Appraiser Steven Hart was sound. His colleagues, however, wanted to discuss the matter further in closed session before making a decision in public at their first meeting in January.
District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said she had legal questions for County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts.
“My concern is there are no comparable properties right now in Del Norte County, and I don’t even know if there are any in California,” Starkey told Redwood Voice. “Until they can find those, they should err on the side of the applicant.”
During his argument, Hart said Matson had submitted an application to the Planning Department for a building permit on a new residence. When Matson applied for an appeal to the Assessor’s Office’s property tax valuation, Hart said he spoke with the applicant and conducted a field visit.
Hart said he and his colleagues concluded that Matson’s home was the result of an owner/builder project as opposed to a contractor-built project. Hart said there are high-end modular homes. But, he said, Matson’s house is stick-built.
“It was properly permitted, properly inspected, so it’s a house,” Hart said. “Tuff Shed’s not going to cut it.”
Hart said the Assessor’s Office came to the conclusion that Matson’s property should be valued at a total of $325,000 — including $265,000 for the property improvements — by comparing it to other local properties.
Those comparable properties must have been completed no later than 90 days past the applicant property’s completion date, in this case Dec. 13, 2023, according to Hart. He said the Assessor’s Office can go “as far back as possible” when it comes to assessing the applicant’s property value based on the market approach.
In the case of Matson’s property, the two comparable homes were finished in March 2023 — “so you got that nine month span,” Hart said.
When District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short pointed out that the comparable homes have more bedrooms and more bathrooms than Matson’s property, Hart said this is where adjustments come into play. He said appraisers take square footage, quality and class into consideration when determining a valuation.
“There are no market indicators that would suggest [Matson’s property] would go for less than what we put on it. It’s a stick-built house,” he said, adding that with the market adjustments, the Assessor’s Office came up with a $325,000 total valuation with $265,000 for the property improvements themselves.
Hart addressed the “Tuff Shed connotations” a second time.
“It’s not just a shed,” he said. “It is a different looking house. It’s a very plain house. But it is a properly built and inspected house.”
The Assessor’s Office’s written argument was not publicly available to Redwood Voice since the Board of Equalization hasn’t concluded its deliberations. But, Short pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting, the two homes the Assessor’s Office compared Matson’s property to are on Roy Avenue and Breen Street.
According to Matson, the property his home sits on was once the Foursquare Church parking lot. It also had a house on it, but he said that he found out from local friends that Crescent City had burned it down.
Matson told Redwood Voice that he paid for a prefabricated unit. Instead of making the asked-for modifications at its factory in Medford, Tuff Shed representatives asked if they could do the upgrades on Matson’s property. He said they supplied him with stamped engineering plans bearing the Tuff Shed moniker.
Matson unfurled those plans to the Board of Equalization on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Cobb said, in addition to assessing property tax based on its market value, comparing its sale to the sale of similar properties, it could also be based on how much it cost to build, though that value would likely be less than market value.
“If you don’t have good comparable sales, then cost [value] is the second option,” he said. “In this situation, I think the cost for the owner/builder is very low. When we pull our comparable sales, yes we don’t have other modular, or other Tuff Shed-style homes to compare it to, but you can look at these older, similar sized homes and similar-quality builds.”
Cobb said Planning officials told him via email that Matson’s home went through the same inspections as any other stick-built home and “they even refer to it as a stick-built house.”
Because Matson owns a modular house, however, Cobb said he and his colleagues used the lower end of the market to come up with a valuation.
“We think it would have sold in the range for $325,000 once it was completed,” he said. “You have to back out the value of the land, because we’re just talking about the home right now, that gives you the $265,000.”
District 2 Supervisor Chris Howard said that valuation for Matson’s home seemed excessive for Del Norte County and asked the Assessor’s Office could sit down with the applicant and come up with something more favorable.
“This is literally the reason why people can’t afford homes,” Howard said. “Because of these values. It’s a pretty interesting discussion, and we’re having it right now. I’m welcoming the opinions, [but] this makes our ability to assess a home in our neighborhood pretty damn tough.”
Borges, however, was ready to side with the Assessor’s Office, though he says he doesn’t like taxes. The properties the Assessor’s Office compared Matson’s home to in order to come up with its valuation meet “all the requirements of the law.” He said he felt the Assessor’s Office met its burden of proof.
“If you peel this building apart, you’re going to see it’s built to the same standard and engineered for our county the same way as any other stick-built home,” Borges said.
Between now and January when the Board is expected to make a final decision about Matson’s property, the applicant says he wants to go back to the Tuff Shed company to try to find similar structures to his that he can show county supervisors.
Matson also pointed out that a Tuff Shed can be an affordable path to homeownership for young adults starting out or for retirees on a fixed income. But they wouldn’t be able to handle the property taxes, he said.
He also didn’t want to discount the idea of sweat equity when it comes to calculating property taxes.
“When you put all that work in yourself, the reason you’re doing it is to keep your costs down,” he said. “These assessors completely disregarded sweat equity and when you do something like that, to me, speaking as a veteran, that’s very unAmerican.”
