Mountain Home Ramada Inn Appeals County’s High Appraisal

Ramada Inn at 1127 U.S. Hwy 62 E in Mountain Home.

A hotel and an apartment complex are battling with the Equalization Board of Baxter County over the value of their property assessments.

Court documents filed in that dispute provide unusual insight into the finances of one of the companies — Mountain Home Hospitality LLC, which does business as the Ramada Inn.

The hotel lists 77 guest rooms and three meeting rooms with a total meeting space of 4,000 SF. And in a recent 12-month period, the hotel had a 32% occupancy rate. A healthy occupancy rate would be about twice that, according to exhibits filed in the case.

Mountain Home Hospitality said the assessor valued the hotel at $1.88 million, when the true market value is $1.5 million, according to the filing earlier this month in the Circuit Court of Baxter County.

Mountain Home Hospitality bought the hotel in 2016 for $1.8 million. In 2017, the hotel reported $720,500 in revenue and a net income of $167,485. But in 2018, revenue was flat — $720,000 — while the franchise fee jumped from $47,800 in 2017 to $87,600. Net income in 2018 was just $2,235.

The Grand Apartments didn’t include as many financial details in its appeal. It said that the Baxter County assessor valued the property for 2019 at $3.1 million. The 40-unit apartment complex first appealed that value to the County Court of Baxter County.

In January, Baxter County Judge Mickey Pendergrass dropped the appraisal to $2.5 million. But the Grand Apartments said in court filings that the value for 2019 should have been $2 million and appealed it to the circuit court.

Pendergrass told Whispers that there wasn’t much he could say about the cases “except that they appealed their assessment.”