More Jefferson County homes are losing value than gaining, according to newest round of property assessments.

Roughly 7,700 residential properties — many of them in Wyandotte, Wilder Park and other southcentral Louisville neighborhoods — saw their valuations lowered, compared with about 6,000 homes that will see higher assessments this year. That doesn’t include homes sold or improved in the last year; they get automatic new assessments.

A handful of homes in Highland Park are being lowered by more than 15 percent, Jefferson Property Valuation Administrator Tony Lindauer said.

It’s one of the fewest number of increases in years as part the annual review of Jefferson County property conducted by the PVA office.

“Even though the national housing market is coming out of intensive care,” the return to a healthy housing market is slower, Lindauer said.

In addition, nearly 500 commercial properties in the central business district — offices, retailers, apartments, parking lots and garages and a few industrial tracts — are getting their valuations raised about 5 percent.

The 2014 assessments are based largely on about 7,250 residential sales recorded in 2013.

Under state law, PVAs are required to reassess an area’s property if more than 10 percent are out of line with fair-market value. That applied to Wilder Park and Wyandotte, the Algonquin, Taylor-Berry and Fairgrounds neighborhoods and segments of Shively and Highland Park.

Lindauer said his office is mailing about 35,000 reassessment notices, with about 14,000 going to property owners in the southcentral Louisville area.

Notices are also going to property owners whose assessments were automatically raised because the property was sold or improved in 2013 — they have to be assessed at the sale price, or have the value of the improvement tacked on to the assessment, depending on the situation.

Metro Louisville, or Jefferson County, has about 280,000 residential and about 20,000 commercial properties.

Lindauer said “it appears people are beginning to feel a little better financially, and as a result, the housing market is beginning to move again. We are headed toward a much better market in most areas.”

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Questions about your assessment?

• People with questions about an assessment can have what the PVA refers to as a “conference appeal” — by going to jeffersonpva.ky.gov before May 19.

• Questions also can be directed to 574-6224, starting Monday.

• Property assessment rolls are open for public inspection May 5-19 at 815 W. Market Street (Glassworks Building), Suite 400.

• The documents can be inspected from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 10 and 17.

• Assessment disputes that can’t be resolved may be heard by a board of tax appeals starting in late June. Those boards are appointed by the mayor and administered by the Jefferson County clerk’s office.