The City and Borough of Juneau began mailing out annual property tax assessment values to homes and businesses late last week. And for most, the change from this year to last shouldn’t be too jarring.
According to new data shared by the city, the median assessed value for residential properties increased by just over half a percent. The median assessed value of a single-family home increased by even less — about .32%.
Angie Flick, the city’s finance director, said this year’s data follows a recent trend of stability in Juneau’s housing market.
“We’re flat — there doesn’t seem to be a lot of price competition,” she said. “We’re not seeing huge fluctuations in sales prices like what was experienced earlier this decade.”
In 2023, Juneau’s residential assessed property value increased by an average of about 16% — and some residents reported a more than 40% rise.
But for the past two years, values have largely cooled down, increasing by less than two percent annually on average. That wasn’t the case for everyone, though. Last year, many homes in the Mendenhall Valley near the riverfront saw a roughly 20% drop in value. That was largely because of the glacial outburst flood in 2024, which damaged more than 300 homes in the area.
Flick says this year’s data in that area is much more stable. It follows the installation of HESCO barriers, a temporary levee that protected hundreds of homes during last August’s flood.
“We took a more conservative approach a couple years ago and expected homes to sell for quite a bit less in the area because of the proximity to the river,” she said. “That just hasn’t borne out in reality with sales data that we have.”
Commercial office and retail buildings saw a 14% spike this year, but overall commercial property assessments increased by roughly 7.5%.
Though property tax assessments are in the mail, residents won’t be billed until this summer. The city calculates property taxes by multiplying a property’s assessed value by the local mill rate. The Juneau Assembly will decide on a mill rate in the coming months.
