Property tax assessments up in your area? (Atlanta: mortgage, refinance)

[arjay57]

Sounds like Inman Park is on the warpath.

Fulton County Property Tax Assessment Spikes Galvanize Inman Park - East Atlanta, GA Patch

How's it going with assessments in other areas of metro Atlanta? You would certainly think they'd be going down.

[gt6974a]

Cobb went up b/c of the mil rate but many homes were also assessed higher.

Going down, haha, good joke. That'll never happen unless you appeal. I appealed mine 3 years ago and won, I'll have to try it again in January.

[PKCorey]

2012 bills aren't up on the Rockdale website as of yet so I'm not sure.

[residinghere2007]

Mine went WAY down. Ironically I am happy about it since I have an escrow account so my monthly mortgage will decrease. Ours was already highly inflated though. I live in English Avenue and had an assessment of $250K when I moved in which was ridiculous. We got it lowered but it was still too high, now it is the right amount. That coupled with a refinance and I think I will cut my mortgage in half by the fall.

ETA: We appealed our high rates twice, once it was lowered, last year it was denied, but this year they lowered it automatically.

[jane078]

We are in West Cobb and our assessment dropped. Again. By a LOT. While it means we're paying less property tax, what I'd like more is to eventually have some equity in this house, which doesn't look like it's ever going to happen.

[ATLTJL]

My assessment in Gwinnett dropped a lot last year. I appealed and had it dropped even more.

This year it remained steady. I appealed again, but haven't heard back yet. The appeal process is pretty painless here and they did assess my home at what I would consider a fair value.

[K-SawDude]

West Midtown. Our assessments are WAY up in our building this year--like a 35% increase over last year's assessment. But having done a recent refi, I can affirm that this new assessment is pretty spot on. (The city was definitely undervaluing us before.)

[cqholt]

Mine went up, but that was because DeKalb didn't include the renovations to my house last year before I bought. Wasn't too much of a raise.

[BobKovacs]

Why would property taxes be expected to go down just because values went down? If the county/city didn't find ways to reduce their budgets, they've still got to collect the same amount of tax as the prior year (and usually more), so if your value went down, they've got to raise the millage rate. Everyone is talking about "challenging their assessments"- that's great- get enough people to do it, and when the tax digest drops enough, they'll raise the rates even more to make up the shortfall. You might see a short-term drop in your taxes, but they'll eventually go right back up. You don't really expect the governments to "do more with less", do you???

[RoslynHolcomb]

Mine in North DeKalb went down 10% after going up 5% last year. When we refinanced two years ago the value was the same as when we bought it, so I'm not sure what changed. I understand there will be a tax increase because the DCSS is run by idiots, so it really makes no difference.