Tax agent disputes county increases on multiple Old Castle industrial sites, cites building quality and land allocations

At a May 2025 special hearing of the Oklahoma County Board of Equalization, a tax agent representing Old Castle properties urged the board to lower assessments on several industrial parcels, arguing the county’s new valuation model overstated value by treating metal-shell manufacturing and storage buildings as higher-quality assets.

The agent (representing Pivotal Tax Solutions and identified in the hearing packet as the tax representative) presented evidence for multiple properties including a Sunny Lane site (listed in the record at roughly $3.96 million by the assessor, agent sought about $2.3 million), a South Broadway property (assessor’s income indicated value near $3.2 million; agent sought a lower value), an Old Castle site in Harrah (assessor reduced a $1.4 million-plus figure to $1.22 million; the agent asked the board to set fair market value around $700,000), and an Enterprise Avenue account (assessor near $1.415 million; agent requested about $800,000).

The agent’s central argument was consistent across properties: the buildings are predominantly metal-shell industrial structures intended for manufacture and storage, not high-quality concrete or block industrial buildings, and thus should not be compared without significant downward adjustments. "These properties are not well maintained, and they're kinda used and abused," the agent told the board, noting that many Old Castle facilities are owner-occupied and seldom leased in ways that support higher market rents used in county models. The agent provided six sales and several lease comparables across the hearings and used cost and income analyses to argue for lower values.

Assessor staff replied that their income and comparable-sales analyses supported the current values and that the county’s land model and time-window adjustments produced medians that were defensible. An assessor representative said the county’s median for comparable steel industrial buildings after recent recalibration was just north of $70 per square foot and that market and income indicators supported the assessor’s adjustments. The assessor also noted the county’s land valuations are based on a 2016 sale in the area and acknowledged the land schedule may be updated after a focused land analysis.

The hearings included several technical disputes the board queried: whether building-size adjustments were applied as superior or inferior (the agent argued some of the assessor’s size adjustments were incorrectly signed); whether recent portfolio sales should be treated as multi-property sales or separated; and how to handle land-value versus building-value allocation when a site has unusually large acreage relative to the building footprint. In at least one case the board noted it had lowered a prior-year value during an earlier review.

None of the hearings produced an immediate board vote or final adjustment. The hearing officer closed each Old Castle matter and told the parties the board would finalize values at a subsequent meeting and issue written determinations.

Why this matters: Large commercial and industrial account valuations can move sizeable taxable values on the county roll; disputes over whether a shell metal building is equivalent to a higher-quality industrial building affect both assessed values and expectations for local commercial property taxes.

The board closed the Old Castle hearings and scheduled written determinations after staff and the tax agent submitted and clarified the comparative and cost data; no final changes were announced at the session.