property taxes. Valued too high!!!

[2luvmickey]

I have appealed ours several times (we've lived in our home nearly 17 years) and we have had success.

First time, I took in my home's actual blueprints to prove we were being charged for a non existent room, AND presented them with our sale information to prove the value of the home.

Second time, we gathered the value of similar neighborhood homes (sometimes this is published in the local paper) and took that in to the assessor. Luckily, there was a glitch in the percentage used in our assessment and it was recalculated at the correct rate.

My thought is - it can't hurt to try! Sometimes mistakes are made in the assessment, just make sure you file the correct paperwork on time.

Good luck!

 

[SCHBR'smom]

We are currently appealing our property assessment. Our informal hearing is tomorrow, but DH can't get off work. We are going to try to drop off a recent appraisal today for review. Our property value with the county went up over 20,000, but nothing is selling to support a hike in value. Lucky for us, we tried to refinance in January and have that appraisal showing our house to have a market value of 20,000 less than the county assessed. Hopefully, it will all go smoothly.

 

[NJ2Boardwalk]

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.

Wow, 90K less, thats awesome. We bought very high in 2006 and now things have taken a nose dive. My taxes have gone up over 3K since we have been there. We did put in a pool and spent some $ in the back yard but they hit us for that as well. Mind me asking what county you are in?

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

We are in the process of doing it now. We feel they are about 20 percent too high. We have gone through the first stage already and are waiting for their "reply".

 

[minnie1928]

Wow, 90K less, thats awesome. We bought very high in 2006 and now things have taken a nose dive. My taxes have gone up over 3K since we have been there. We did put in a pool and spent some $ in the back yard but they hit us for that as well. Mind me asking what county you are in?

I'm hoping for $90,000 less, but we'll see what happens. We bought in mid 2008 and if I tried to sell right now, I'd lose about $150,000.

I'm in Bergen County.

 

[Lucille1963]

We recently appealed and won. They wanted to up our taxes by about 70%, we had it decreased to less than 20%. DH did it all himself.

 

[Colleen27]

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.

We ran into that too, and since the ONLY sales in our neighborhood in the past YEAR have been foreclosures we weren't successful in challenging our appraisal. I'm not really complaining; it was worth a try and only took an hour or so of our time, and our tax rates here are relatively low so it really doesn't make that big a difference in the big picture.