Sen. Kelly Loeffler's property tax plunged after mansion's value mysteriously dropped

The value of Sen. Kelly Loeffler's lavish Atlanta mansion mysteriously plunged four years ago, resulting in a dramatically lower property tax bill.

The Georgia Republican bought the 15,000-square-foot mansion in 2009 with her husband Jeffrey Sprecher for $10.5 million, then the most expensive home purchase in the city's history, but the value suddenly dropped to $4.15 million in 2016, reported The Daily Beast.

“You know something's wrong there, if there was just a singular discount,” said R.J. Morris, a former member of the Fulton County Board of Assessors who reviewed the tax documents with the couple's names redacted.

The couple had been paying $200,000 a year in city and county taxes, but the 60-percent drop in their home value lowered that bill to $90,000.

The appraised value has since risen to about $5 million, but Loeffler and her husband are still paying about $80,000 a year less than when they purchased the mansion known as “Descante.”

The devaluation came during a real-estate boom in Atlanta, where home prices have jumped by 81 percent since 2012, and one year after the couple spent at least $365,000 on improvements to the property.

Even more curiously, seven of their eight closest neighbors saw their property values rise, according to records kept by Fulton County, where officials were unable to offer an explanation for the discrepancy.

A tax professional who regularly deals with the county told The Daily Beast that the Board of Assessors was "wrong a lot" in property valuation, and former board member Morris said he can't imagine they would attempt to meddle with the tax bill.

"I would be shocked," Morris said. "You're smart enough to have a building in Tuxedo Park, which tells me you're pretty smart, unless you inherited it, and you're so stupid you turned around and got some government officials to lower your property value when it's a public document?”