‘You’ve got to be kidding’: Wichita home value jumped 40% with massive power pole

The Sedgwick County appraiser is calling for some northeast Wichita homeowners to appeal their property valuations after the county failed to consider the giant metal power poles Evergy planted in their yards.

The recommendation to appeal came after The Wichita Eagle found two properties in the neighborhood had increased in value after 105-foot-tall steel poles were put in their yards. One of the homes jumped 40% in appraised value.

An oft-photographed, two-floor home at 1147 N. Green increased in value after a pole was installed, from $11,640 to $16,300, according to appraisal records.

It’s unclear why its value increased. Sedgwick County officials did not provide a detailed explanation.

“This property experienced a substantial increase due to lack of consideration of a large power pole,” Sedgwick County spokesperson Kate Flavin said in an email.

Opponents have argued that the power poles make the homes unattractive to buyers, thus lowering their value. Neighbors told The Eagle that no major repairs were done to the home last year.

“Get a pole, and your property value increases? Now, that defies logic,” said Kansas Rep. Gail Finney, who has spent the past year and half trying to clean up the Evergy mess in her district. “That’s one of the last houses that anyone would want to buy.”

Evergy, formerly Westar, planted 105-foot-tall steel poles in front lawns throughout a predominantly low-income, historically black neighborhood in Wichita to support high-voltage lines connecting three substations in northeast Wichita.

Following a public outcry, Evergy bought some of the properties and offered an undisclosed amount of additional compensation to homeowners who opt to stay. The company has vacillated on whether it will replace the metal poles with smaller wooden ones.

Lawmakers and local elected officials say the jump in property value pours salt in an open wound and some say it casts doubt on every valuation in the county.

“That makes me wonder if any of the other ones are correct,” Finney said.

Another home with a power pole in the yard, at 2911 E. Mossman, increased by 3%. Most of the others retained their values.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mayor Brandon Whipple said. “That is strange, and the county needs to be transparent with the methodology.

“Without transparency, there are too many questions,” he said.

Downtown condo loses value

Multiple local county and city officials pointed to City Council member Cindy Claycomb’s condo in the heart of Old Town as evidence that this year’s appraisals don’t make sense.

Despite increased public and private investment downtown, Claycomb’s condo this year dropped 4%, from $357,100 to $342,800.

Claycomb said she thinks the valuation on her property is accurate, after it increased in previous years. But she questions why the house at 11th and Green jumped so much in a single year.

“You get a 105-foot pole in your front yard and your appraisal goes up? That doesn’t seem reasonable,” Claycomb said.

Whipple and City Council member Jeff Blubaugh said the disparity between downtown condos and the homes with poles smack of unfairness.

“If you have a luxury condo that is going down in appraisal, giving all of those people a tax break, but then you have a place in an economically disadvantaged area that has less square footage on the front yard because it has a huge pole now, and you’re increasing the taxes, what’s going on here?” Whipple said.

“It’s taking advantage of low-income and fixed-income neighborhoods,” Blubaugh said.

Blubaugh has worked in real estate for nearly two decades. He said the way the appraiser’s office calculates value fails to account for neighborhood characteristics or the repairs that would be needed to older homes before they could be sold.

“As a real estate agent, I cannot go out there and put a sign in their yard and sell it for that price,” Blubaugh said of older homes in Wichita. “Because I know the inspection is going to come back and it’s going to be $30,000 worth of things to fix before it can be sellable.

“That’s the real problem I have with this,” he said.

Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said the county, city and school board should do all they can to mitigate the valuation increases to keep property taxes low.

“If you can’t sell your home for what the county has it appraised at, we are missing the mark. And I thought generally we were doing a good job. I’ve been in elected office now this is starting my tenth year, and I’ve never had this many people reach out with such dramatic increases.”

O’Donnell said many homeowners in his district saw increases of more than 10%.

“These double-digit increases are insane,” he said. “Something’s wrong, and we need to figure this out.”

Market versus reality

Major disparities between some of the home values that increased and decreased have fueled calls by local politicians for more transparency about how those values are calculated.

In Sedgwick County, 81% of residential properties increased in value this year and only 3% decreased, according to a tally of valuation notices mailed to residents last week. The appraiser’s office credits a short supply of homes and a hot housing market.

Blubaugh said a seller’s market shouldn’t drive up the valuation of everyone’s property because not everyone plans to sell.

“It’s not a realistic value,” he said. “If everyone in Wichita put their house on the market, and we flooded the market, these properties probably wouldn’t bring half the valuation.”

Kenyal Lattimore, who lives on Green directly across from one of the large poles in northeast Wichita, said Wichita’s seller’s market hasn’t rubbed off on her neighborhood.

“In the area where we live, we realize that it’s not the most sought after neighborhood, and I think that’s why we chose to invest in this neighborhood and try to bring that value up,” Lattimore said.

The poles don’t help, Lattimore said.

“When you add power poles and the publicity and the negative things you see when you pull up, or even if you pull up Google Maps, you’ll see these things. So that makes people worry because most people who are moving over here have small children, and they won’t want any kind of negative effects from being so close to these monstrosities.”

This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 5:01 AM.