RIO RANCHO, N.M. — Commercial property owners are left in shock after opening their recent property valuations. They say a spike in value will hurt their wallet by increasing their property taxes.

“The initial shock of opening valuations was the 145.16% increase and that was a shock for all of us, and it’s not sustainable here,” said Rebecca Bogan, the owner of Guerrero Village off Southern.

Bogan told KOB 4 that she has no idea how her property valuation came back so much higher than in years past.

“We have seen an increase in market rents, we have seen an increase in construction costs, seen a decrease in vacancy rates,” Sandoval County Assessor Linda Gallegos said. “All good things for business owners, right, all supporting an increase in valuation.”

Gallegos said the valuations are based off the market. The more sales in an area, the more the property value goes up – and then the assessor is tasked with analyzing the data and making sure commercial properties are valued correctly. But that’s where things get tricky.

“Sandoval County has almost 151,000 accounts, it is simply not logistically possible to review all accounts each year,” Gallegos said. “So it is very possible that your account has been reviewed and maybe your neighbors haven’t been.”

Sandoval County is still in the process of counting all of the businesses that contested their assessment this year. So far, there have been around 8,500 protests – Guererro Village is one of them.

“It is such a huge increase in property taxes that it’s going to affect us in an extremely negative way,” Bogan said. “It is going to put to the point where we can’t afford to pay the taxes on the place.”

According to the county, this is typically how many protests they get every year and they are able to talk through most assessments before having to take it up with the protest board.

There is a 3% cap for residential areas that get reassessed. KOB 4 asked if there was anything similar for commercial properties. The county assessor said there is not, and that is why these large valuation spikes are possible, depending on the market.