It’s bad news for Karnes County agriculture workers, but rural land values are going up, up, up.

Here in the county, rural property is being appraised at a higher value every year due to a trend in buying.

Karnes County Appraisal District Chief Appraiser Kathy Barnhill said her office has taken a lot of flak for having appraised the properties at higher values, but said she’s went by the book and recent land sales have shown the properties to be worth more.

"The agriculture land values went up. Basically it’s (based on) sales information we receive. We see what (land) sells for per acre and that attributes to the increase in the value," she said. "Even the realtors are telling us now … there are more buyers than there are sellers. They’re down to the hardcore people that want to hold on to their land. The sales data looks pretty good right now. If anybody wanted to sell, this would be the time. Even though there was a drought, the land is still selling."

Some of the high-dollar buyers are Texans in large cities like Houston who want a place to come to hunt, four-wheel, or relax on the weekend or vacation. Other buyers come from out of state.

They all want a piece of the country, and there are more buyers than there are sellers. When that happens in any market, the price of available goods keeps going up.

"Neighboring people aren’t buying the land, it’s people coming in from Houston and California and other places," Barnhill explained. "They just have money to spend and that’s an investment to them. It’s something where they can get away from the city life and come to the country."

The governor doesn’t buy that story, though. In August, Rick Perry put together a 15-person investigative task force aimed at investigating appraisal entities.

He’s alleged that rising property valuations have overshadowed recent Texas state tax cuts.

"Earlier this year, we provided Texas property owners with the largest property tax cut in state history — a 33 percent reduction in their school property tax rates over the next two years," Perry said in a press release on his Web site in September. "Now we need to address the rest of that equation: the silent tax hikes of rising appraisals."

Perry also issued a mandatory directive to all appraisal entities. Next year, they’ll have to start from scratch and reappraise every single property they oversee as opposed to the mass appraisals based on property sales appraisal districts normally do.

"We will start our reappraisal plan next year. The state has issued an ultimatum that we have to start reappraising and we have to have a plan this year. We have to reappraise every property in the county," Barnhill said.

Whether or not the reappraisals will bring down property values — and ease the tax burden on local farmers and ranchers — remains to be seen, though. The governor hasn’t made any promises beyond double-checking appraised values for accuracy.

Perry’s task force also will be holding public meetings to gather input from concerned property owners. The closest meeting will be October 19 in Corpus Christi at Coastal Bend College at 9 a.m.

A San Antonio meeting is scheduled for the morning of November 10, but a specific time and a location have not yet been chosen.

See http://www.governor.state.tx.us for more details.