Dark Stores

There are many worthy assessment-related questions posed on PTAX and elsewhere that I hope we can address during the life of this new blog. But given our blog title, Death and Taxes, and a topic looming around us that some have coined Dark Stores, it seems like a dark and creepy coincidence to start right here. The Dark Store Theory, if it hasn’t already premiered nearby, is coming to a town near you. It sounds like a scary movie, and some assessors wish it was fictional, but this is a real story. The story goes like this: “Big box” store owners, such as NC-Based Lowes, contend that the value of their relatively new buildings is comparable to the value of similar, but vacated, “dark” buildings. Many times, store owners want to use comparable sales. It is typical for owners that eventually sell their buildings to use deed restrictions limiting buyers that have competitive uses. So, they argue, assessors should look at sales of stores that have gone out of business and are vacant, since that's the only way their current, subject store would ever come on the market. The result in jurisdictions where this theory has been argued successfully has