Typically foreclosures are not considered when appraising home values, but that is going to change in some areas stricken by foreclosures in Hampton Roads, according to the Daily Press.

Assessors will be considering short sales and bank sales in a neighborhood's reassessment if those sales dominate the market, so the magnitude of foreclosures on property values will be neighborhood by neighborhood.

Many cities and counties in the Hampton Roads area have assessments coming up in the next few months and will be faced with addressing this issue. Homeowners should be prepared for how foreclosures in their neighborhood might affect their home values.

"Neighborhoods stricken by foreclosures might see that reflected in home values in some Hampton Roads cities.

Foreclosures historically have been ruled out in determining home value. But times have changed in areas plagued by foreclosures.

'Never in the history of appraising have I heard this before, but people are starting to take foreclosures into consideration,' Newport News Assessor Chuck Young said. 'This is something we're going to have to consider. We don't have a choice.'

Assessor's offices in Hampton and Newport News will consider bank sales and short sales in a neighborhood's reassessment if those sales dominated the market, both Young and Hampton Assessor Brian E. Gordineer said.

Newport News is just beginning its assessment process.

'It's a little too early to discuss which neighborhoods will be affected,' Young said. 'We aren't far enough along to make those decisions because we haven't dealt with it before.'

Hampton is in the midst of conducting a sales analysis that will wrap up Dec. 31.

'At this point we have not seen individual assessment neighborhoods where foreclosure sales dominate any individual markets,' Gordineer said.

In nearby Williamsburg and Poquoson and Isle of Wight, York and James City counties, though, foreclosures aren't being used to determine value. Those counties and smaller cities have seen foreclosures, but not in clusters or in numbers big enough to affect the market, assessing officers said.

Gloucester County is finalizing a reassessment effective Jan. 1. County Assessor Reese Milligan said the county hasn't used foreclosure-related transactions as direct comparisons, but is trying to gauge the overall influence of foreclosures on the market.

In Mathews County, the next reassessment will be effective in 2011, and Middlesex County's next reassessment will be effective in 2012.

Assessing officers around the country are grappling with how to handle a spike in foreclosures in parts of the U.S."

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