I am feeling quite proud of myself. We received our housing appraisal for property taxes for next year. As usual, they went up a lot. This is good in some ways because it shows that our home value is increasing. But, since we are not looking to sell our house for awhile it means that we are out more money for property taxes.
Every year since we have moved here our property has been reassessed and every year I have driven downtown to fight it. Every year I have had it reduced. This is an area where my type a personality and my math/spreadsheet abilities benefit me. I actually have a spreadsheet that I use every year with the information from every house on our block. It makes me quite mad when I plug in the numbers and analyze the data. This year the value of the land went up on every house. At the same time, the value of the actual houses went down on every house but 4. Guess whose house was included in those whose value went up? OURS! Not only did it go up, but it increased by 28%! The other houses that increased only increased by about 5%. I was baffled at why our house increased so much more than any other. We are not the largest house or the nicest house on our street and we had done no improvements on the property since last year. Not only that but our house's value per square foot was $25 over the average value per square foot for our street. Something is not equatable here.
So, I went in to the appraisal office with my spreadsheets, along with the list of homes that sold on our street in the last year. I had figured out what our house would be valued at if we were assessed at the average value per square foot for either the block or the homes that sold last year. I also had information that one of my neighbors had already fought his appraisal which started out higher than ours by 10K and he got them down lower than ours last year. That was the nail in the coffin for the appraiser.
The first year I went in with my data the appraiser jokingly offered me a job because I was more thorough than they are. This year they were also impressed. There is a lot more that goes into the appraisal process than just having an equatable average for your street but with my data and the information from my neighbor, I was able to get our property value down 22% which will save us just under $1000 in taxes this year.
So, I encourage all of you to do your homework and fight your property taxes if it seems you are being assessed higher than your neighbors. You have until the end of the month to do it. Email me for more details or websites to look at if you need to.
8 comments:
Mitch's mom has had to do the very same thing with her house.
I can't wait to show your post to Mitch. He will be very impressed with you!
Seriously, Christy, that is impressive! It gives me tired head just reading your post! I'm glad we've not had to deal with any of that since we are still renting, but this is good info for when we do buy a house.
we need to talk. ours croent up a bunch too. you rock.
They must do it to you because they want to see the "cute activist mom" at the appraiser's office again! - w
Wow! I am so impressed! I know you well enough to not be surprised, but I'm still impressed. Way to go.
I still want to see pictures of the kitchen and bathroom remodels.
Matt filled the form out, was given a court date, didn't even show up in court, and they still lowered it for us. I would HOPE that yours got lowered more than ours for doing all that reasearch, but it just goes to show you should ALWAYS contest no matter what.
We have done the same thing every single year since we built our house. Our land has increased by $30,000. This year the only homes that went up in value were the one story homes. Two stories went down about 10%. I don't know about all that nonsense. But I do know John will be making the yearly trek to the appraiser. They should be on a first name basis now.
Ok! Here's your comment. I guess we're too late for this year but rest assured next year i'll be on the assessor like white on rice.
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