Real Estate Legislation Under Scrutiny

LANSING, MI-The Michigan Municipal League says three bills affecting land and commercial real estate legislation have been sent to the governor. They affect property assessments, makeup of brownfield authority boards and airport zoning.

* HB 4373 changes the current practice of placing buildings and improvements on leased land on the personal property tax roll and requires that property to be treated as real property. It has been sent to the governor.

The bill became controversial when utility taxpayers argued it would require property previously appraised as personal property to be appraised using real property valuation methodology. Although there is a serious question about the accuracy of this conclusion, the utilities proposed several so-called “clarifying” amendments that would have changed the basic definitions of real and personal property and produced substantial revenuelosses.