Property Tax Appraisals

I’d been “eagerly” awaiting my annual property tax assessment to make sure the city wasn’t overvaluing our house since the market is in a slump.

If one intends to contest the amount, it has to be done by May 1st.

Having not received it in the mail yet, though I got a “bill” for the property taxes with no value, just a statement that it was being paid by my mortgage company, I decided to call the assessors office.

I was surprised to find out that they didn’t mail me one since the value hadn’t changed. I see that as a problem for two reasons: 1) they aren’t notifying me of the amount, thus denying me the opportunity to contest it, and, 2) last year’s assessment was on the high side (and the only house in my neighborhood that has sold in the past year was about $40k less than my assessment and that was with tons of concessions on her part).

Ug! I’m waiting for the appraiser to call me back.

Following up… The city appraiser called me back as promised. He told me only one house in my neighborhood actually sold in 2008 and it sold for the assessed amount. I’ve missed the deadline at this point, but I’m still gonna do my own research as I’m not sure I believe that only one house sold. I know when we bought our house back in 1998, no houses had sold recently in our neighborhood, so they expanded their search about 3 miles. And they had to expand the search for several years in order to INCREASE our assessment every year. Seems like they changed the rules to their benefit.