property taxes. Valued too high!!!

[weluvdizne]

O.k., so we got our property tax bill in the mail today. I know that they have the house valued way too high since we have experienced this lovely economic downturn. Has anyone challenged their value? Were you successful? What exactly did you do? I know you can hire a lawyer to do it for you, but that will only eat into my benefit of the whole process. From what I gather, they have over-valued our house by about $50,000 or more. That could make a difference of about $1300 in my tax bill! WOW! Thanks so much in advance. I appreciate any advice.

 

[NJ2Boardwalk]

I was going to do it for this year but it must be done by April 1st. The process is quite a pain, but can save you lots of money in the long run. You don't have to hire a lawyer but you need comparable sold properties from a realtor etc. An appraisal is also needed which can run a couple of hundred dollars. I am sure each state is differant but the above is needed for NJ. There are also some filing fees to the county.

Good luck

 

[Mrs. Charming]

This happens a lot. A friend of mine is on the Board of Assessments, and deals with this day in and day out. Other than that I don't know much about it... but good luck!

 

[daleswife]

This happened with my parents house. They had it appraised for a home equity loan and it appraised for X amount and when the tax bill came out it was for Y amount which was about 38K more. she showed them the appraisal and they fixed it.

 

[Motherofboys]

I appealed mine in March, they ended up decreasing it by $10k which was not quite the $30k decrease I argued for, but I'll take it

You need to call your township/county office (whatever the authority is where you live) and find out the process for appealing.

The most important thing I learned from watching the appeals (I did mine on my own, just did some research and prepared a summary for them of my argument) was that your comparables need to be for the period that the assessment takes into account -- not just recent sales.

So like where I live, people had comparables that were sales done in Dec '09, Jan '10, etc -- but the assessor bases his values on the period of Dec '08 through November '09, so many comparables were of no value and the panel wouldn't consider them at all. They told people to bring them back next year!

So find out the time period that the assessor looks at when making the assessments, and then go from there. With all of the websites out there, the ability to find property sales info online, etc. I certainly wouldn't hire an attorney to do it for me.

Good luck!

 

[Cheshire Figment]

I would start by calling you specific Assessor's Office. You will find that they will tell you what needs to be done, how it shoud be done, and when it must be done by. It is not adversarial, and the people who work there are taxpayers also.

 

[maraki527]

We did and we won. The value of our house decreased by almost $30,000

 

[zoemurr]

A lot of people complain, but not that many go through the process, so it might not be as big of a long shot as you think.

We sent in a list of comps on our street and it was lowered. We didn't meet with anyone or anything. A bit time consuming, but rather painless when you account for the savings.

Good luck!

 

[bettymae1121]

In my county you can appeal, but you must do it within a few weeks of the assement being published in the local paper, if you wait until you get your tax bill, it's too late. Since most people don't read the paper, or if they do they don't read the section the assement is listed in, you can imagine that most people aren't able to appeal. They don't notice the wrong value until they get the bill, and by that time it's too late. At that point you can only appeal if something about your house was wrong...like they thought you had four bedrooms but you only have three, or that you have a half acre and it's only 1/3, something along those lines.

 

[minnie1928]

I was going to do it for this year but it must be done by April 1st. The process is quite a pain, but can save you lots of money in the long run. You don't have to hire a lawyer but you need comparable sold properties from a realtor etc. An appraisal is also needed which can run a couple of hundred dollars. I am sure each state is differant but the above is needed for NJ. There are also some filing fees to the county.

I live in NJ and just filed an appeal for my assessment. It's really not that difficult to do, I probably spent less than 2 hours on it. I contacted a local realtor that I had talked to before, so there was some degree of a relationship already there. Anyway, he sent me a link to all the homes that sold in my neighborhood during the last tax year. I went through those and found 4 that are comparable to my home. I did not have an appraisal performed, nor was I told that one was required. I did have to pay a $100 filing fee. I received a letter in the mail today that my hearing with the assessment board is a week from Friday so we'll see what happens. I'm looking to have my assessment lowered about $90,000.

For what it's worth, I appealed my taxes on my former home in PA and they did lower the value. I took copies of my blueprints and showed them that they had my square footage miscalculated and that lowered my bill a little bit.

 

[bootleg89]

I just got mine adjusted by 40,000 but only because we purchased the house in 2008. AS PP mentioned they look at the sale prices of 2008. My assesors office told me that the only way I could get it adjusted was by bringing in the appraisal and the sale listing and contract.
They told me that the way they figure out the taxes is by taking the value of comparable houses that sold for the last 3 years. Since the prices were still high in 2006 and 2007, the taxes would still be high. They adjusted to sales price for this year but told me that next year they would still take the 2007 value plus the sale value of 2008 and comparable 2009 sales. I guess it will still be higher next year, but I'll see if anything can be done then.
Good luck.

 

[mnrose]

In our area, it only makes sense to do if your property is valued disproportionately high to those around you that are similar. If your house, and all others like yours, are valued too high, but are all similar, then all your going to do is get your value reset (and everyone else around you), and then the mill rate for everyone will have to be changed to make up the money. In other words, your property value might change, but your tax bill will not. In my area (and I own a total of 5 houses in this state), all my property valuations for 2010 went down, but the proposed tax bill in 4 out of the 5 went up. LOL! Well, it really isn't funny, but it proves my point. Our property taxes are established by the county, and the county's financial needs have not gone down just because property values have declined. We still need the same amount of road maintenance, the same amount of police and fire protection, etc. So, they were forced to raise the property tax mill rate for everyone to make up for the precipitous decline in property values.

Now, if your property is disproportionately over valued compared to your neighbors, go for it. But, if everyone is in the same boat, I'd probably not bother.

 

[GoofItUp]

We just moved and ours is valued about $95k above what we paid. We have a meeting set up for Thurs with the tax office. So far, we've just been contacting them by phone. They've walked us through each step and have told us what information we need to provide. It's been pretty easy so far. I recommend contacting your local tax office, explaining what you're wanting to do and why, and getting their advice.

Good luck!

 

[thebeesknees]

We appealed ours and won, too. It can't hurt to try!

 

[DisneyCowgirl]

Where do you live? We are in TX (Brazoria County) and the process is easy (other than the drive down to Angleton). Every year we look up selling prices of houses in our neighborhood, print out the info on those and take some pictures, plus look up the appraised value on houses similar to ours in our neighborhood. Take copies of all that with us to the "informal meeting," and we've always been successful.

BUT, last year they did tell us that they will not consider the prices on any foreclosed homes in the neighborhood in determining the value.

 

[monarchsfan16]

In our area, it only makes sense to do if your property is valued disproportionately high to those around you that are similar. If your house, and all others like yours, are valued too high, but are all similar, then all your going to do is get your value reset (and everyone else around you), and then the mill rate for everyone will have to be changed to make up the money. In other words, your property value might change, but your tax bill will not. In my area (and I own a total of 5 houses in this state), all my property valuations for 2010 went down, but the proposed tax bill in 4 out of the 5 went up. LOL! Well, it really isn't funny, but it proves my point. Our property taxes are established by the county, and the county's financial needs have not gone down just because property values have declined. We still need the same amount of road maintenance, the same amount of police and fire protection, etc. So, they were forced to raise the property tax mill rate for everyone to make up for the precipitous decline in property values.

Now, if your property is disproportionately over valued compared to your neighbors, go for it. But, if everyone is in the same boat, I'd probably not bother.

This. In my town, they've adjusted property values downward, but have also changed the tax rate so that they are collecting approximately the same revenue. The services that everyone wants still need to be provided, so they have to collect the money somehow.

 

[msmama]

In my experience (in my area at least) a lawyer will generally only take you on if they think they can lower you bill by a certain percent. And yes, you have to pay them, but only once, and you have to pay your taxes every year.

Good luck!

 

[dhuba]

We appealed ours twice. The first time we did it ourselves and lost. The second time we hired a lawyer who did all the work and we got our assessment reduced by about 50,000. We had to pay them one third of the amount of the reduced taxes for one year, but it was well worth it, and we didn't have to do any of the work. It has saved us thousands in the past few years. I would make sure you get a lawyer who specialize in property tax appeals.

 

[THERESA522]

I'm a real estate appraiser in NJ and we appeal taxes for homeowners all the time. If you're over-assessed (as most properties are in these times), it's a great idea to do a tax appeal. I'm not sure what the rules are everywhere else, but in NJ, all appeals need to be filed by April 1st. That's for appealing the previous year's return.

In this area, lawyers typically charge a lot to do the appeal. You can do it yourself or you can just hire a licensed appraiser, which, in my experience, are both cheaper options.

 

[CoP Luv]

We did ours ourselves and won. Our value decreased by a signiificant amount and we are saving more than $1400/year on our taxes. It was easy for us since we just purchased the house in 2009 and could give the county the closing documents and a few other things.

We didn't hire a lawyer and it only took about an hour to round up all of our documents.

I would give it a try. You never know what the outcome will be.