With completion of the citywide revaluation, Warwick property owners and some current and former candidates for mayor turned to the Internet to see how their neighbors, as well as elected officials, fared.

Social media buzzed last week with the revelation Mayor Scott Avedisian’s home on Atlantic Avenue dipped in value. Avedisian quickly pointed out that is only part of the picture. A vacant lot is part of his property and that increased in value, raising the overall value of the combined parcels by more than $2,000.

Warwick WATCH, the Facebook page that is run by Stacia Huyler and others, called the revaluation “The Mayor’s Cash Cow.” They pointed out that while most property owners saw their values go up, others went down.

On Thursday, Avedisian said Huyler, who ran for mayor as a Republican in 2014, hadn’t checked all the facts. He said had she done so, she would have known that his property increased in value.

Richard Corrente, Democratic candidate for mayor, also took a jab at Avedisian posting a comment on the Warwick Beacon website as well as in a letter to the editor (appearing in today’s paper). Corrente argues the value assigned the Avedisian property is substantially less than values assigned the property by online real estate sources, Eppraisal and Zillow. According to the Zillow website, its appraisal is a “zestimate” that is close to what a house would sell for. Eppraisal calls its number a free home value property report.

“You pay for what you get,” City Assessor Christopher Celeste said of the online appraisals.

In an interview Friday, Celeste pointed out that the two companies performing the revaluation visited all of the more than 38,000 properties in the city, and that field appraisers entered 50 percent of the residential properties.

“We have systematic, real data to use for our appraisal,” he said.

In the case of the mayor’s house, Celeste said, “The whole Atlantic Avenue went down by 1 percent.”

The mayor thought the condition of some of the houses had served to lower neighborhood values.

Overall, however, values are up by 7 percent for 35,573 residential parcels and 3.8 percent for 3,087 commercial properties. The total residential value bumped up from $5.7 billion to $6.1 billion. Commercial went from $2.19 billion to $2.27 billion.

Celeste cautioned that those numbers wouldn’t be finalized until both companies performing the revaluation complete hearings in about three weeks. The hearings started yesterday in City Hall’s Council Chambers. As instructed in mailed notices, property owners can request a review of their valuations. If they believe the valuation is too high, they should bring supporting information such as comparisons to similar properties that can be obtained from the city’s website or a recent independent appraisal. Other information could include the condition of the property and the neighborhood that they feel were not considered by field appraisers.

As of noon yesterday, five hearing had been completed. The snow was cause for some cancellations.

The volume of hearings is projected to pick up the rest of the week, with as many as four appraisers conducting residential hearings. Appraisers advised people to bring in comparables and photographs of their property, especially if they are pointing out conditions they feel would change the value. If they have estimates on repairs or other costs they believe would affect the values, they should bring those, too.

They should be prepared to leave those documents with the appraiser conducting the hearing.

Celeste called the hearings “the only option” that property owners have at this point to contest valuations. He reminded that the process establishes residential values by looking at the sales of comparative properties for the prior years. It is not done, he emphasized, by looking at the previous value and applying a percentage increase or decrease or leaving it unchanged.

“The old value is never a factor,” he said.

With more than 2 percent of Warwick residential properties sold during 2015, Celeste said appraisers had a good handle on values.

“I’m confident we have good values,” he said.

Overall, Celeste sees a positive message in the increase in values.

“The market finally hit the bottom and it’s going up the other side now,” he said.

Avedisian thought the revaluation went well because the process was “bifurcated” with commercial and residential valuations performed by different companies. This enabled commercial “experts” to focus on those properties, he said.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of appeals,” he said. “They [values] didn’t go sky high.”