Weld commissioners deny tax cut for Greeley's 609 Studios building

Weld County commissioners on Oct. 28 denied a request from Unified Investments, LLC to cut the 2025 value of the 609 Studios apartment building in Greeley from $10,886,640 to $6 million, leaving the assessor's value in place.

The petitioner asked the board to reduce the 2025 value to $6 million, the assessor told the board. The assessor recommended denying the petition, saying the petitioner had not provided market sale-based evidence supporting a reduction. Neither a representative nor the property owner was present when the board considered the petition.

The petitioner argued that the assessor did not adequately account for high turnover, elevated vacancy, reduced income and increased operating expenses, the assessor told the board. The petitioner also contended that the comparable sales used in the valuation had larger unit sizes than the subject property. The petitioner provided income and expense information from 2025, which the assessor said included non-realty expenses and postdated the statutory appraisal date of June 30, 2024.

The assessor's review found four comparable multifamily sales in Weld County, all before June 30, 2024, the assessor said. The office expanded its search to five years because sales in the period were limited.

The comparable properties sold for $90,000 to $123,000 per unit, and the assessor said the sales supported a residential value of $95,000 per unit, at the low end of the market data. That indicated a value of $10,545,000 for the residential portion only, the assessor said.

A second check, using gross rent multipliers, addressed the vacancy and expense claims. A survey of the multipliers for Northern Colorado ranged from 11.25 to 17.57, the assessor said.

A cross-check using market rents as of June 30, 2024, produced an implied multiplier of 8 for the building, which the assessor said was more than 25% below the comparable dataset's lowest multiplier of 11.25. "This conservative and low GRM sufficiently accounts for the higher than typical vacancy turnover and operating expenses reported by the petitioner," the assessor said.

The assessor said Article 10, Section 20, commonly known as TABOR, requires Colorado assessors to value the residential portion of mixed-use property using the market approach only and market data available as of the June 30, 2024, appraisal date. The assessor's office requested a rent roll as of June 30, 2024, and itemized income and expenses for the two years before that date, the assessor said.

The property, known as 609 Studios, is a 12-story mixed-use building at 609 8th Avenue in Greeley. It has 111 residential apartment units and 4,500 square feet of commercial restaurant space. The assessor said the structure was built in '74 as a full-service hotel and was converted to predominantly multifamily use between 2001 and 2002, with additional conversion work completed in 2011, 2021 and 2023.