Assessment Appeals Board of Brighton, CO (Denver: short sale, condo, assessor) - Colorado - City-Data Forum

themaster · 07-27-2009, 06:29 AM

The taxes on my house are being raised due to some necessary remodelling and repairs, but the estimation of it's value has jumped from 75,000 to 261,000 when hardly anything was spent on it. Is this an inflated number? Is there anyone out there who has had simillar experiences and was able to lower the appraisal to something more reasonable at the Assessment Appeals Board? Or does anyone know what will influence the opinion of an Assessment Appeals Board? What they'll listen to? Any advice or insites could be helpful in creating our arguments to put before the board.

sunsprit · 07-27-2009, 07:44 PM

I'm kinda' baffled on your timing of this question. By law, the Colorado county assessor's offices must issue assessments in the spring of odd-number years (every two years), and you have a month to appeal the assessed valuation. If you don't file in that time frame, then you are stuck with the valuation for this assessment cycle (2009 and 2010). The next assessor valuation will come in in 2011, and that's your first opportunity to contest (and possibly, appeal) the valuation.

With the information you've provided, it's impossible to know what the "comps" are or how the assessor determined the value of your house. The only thing you can do now is to go to their office and review the information on the data file about your house for mistakes ... number of rooms, fixtures, sq footage, construction, quality and condition issues, etc. Then you can start running "comps" in the area and see how their valuations and Fair Market Value compare to yours.

It may be that your house wasn't reviewed in the most recent cycles, and then when it was caught in the cycle of having repairs/improvements made, the assessor's office reviewed and updated an older valuation to reflect the current market. They're not amateurs, and they have some defensible reasons as to how they arrived at the valuation.

If you don't have experience with these matters, the best thing you can do for the next appraisal cycle in 2011 will be to get an appraisal of your own done on the house, then wait for the assessor's valuation. If they're pretty close, then probably best to leave the matter alone. If they are way apart, then contest the assessor's valuation.

A professional appraisal will be the best tool you'll have to contest the assessor, but even that isn't cast in stone to your favor if the assessor has comps that ... in their professional opinion ... establish the value of your house. They have several computer programs that analyze your house based on the information on the data card, and they do track the marketplace sales. FWIW, I think the assessor's industry has gotten a lot more competent and professional in the last few cycles with the modern software and database programs they now use ... defeating their valuation is more a matter of finding errors in their database affecting condition or material facts than contesting their sold comps.

BarryK123 · 07-28-2009, 06:55 AM

On this subject, my assessment seemed out of line compared to other units in the (condo) building. So, I appealed, presenting info from similar units assessed significantly less. The assessor stuck by his original value. Now, I have the opportunity to appeal. I'm new to CO. Where I lived before (PA), assessment appeals were usually handled by attorneys, fees paid out of the savings after a lowered assessment. Is that done here as well? Is an attorney typcially used for qassessment appeals in CO?

2bindenver · 07-28-2009, 07:38 AM

Attorneys? no. Appraisers? yes.

Are you comparing sales from Jun 2007 to Dec 2008 or just using other units assessed value? You need to use similar sold properties.

themaster · 07-28-2009, 04:17 PM

The difficulty that I'm having with the jump in estimation is due to it's being purchased at 75,000, around this time last year. I guess it could have been undervalued at the time, but that just seems outrageous. Even for a houseing market that hasn't cooled, like here in the Denver area. I'll have to make sure that the assessed figures are correct.

BarryK123 · 07-28-2009, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2bindenver

Attorneys? no. Appraisers? yes.

Are you comparing sales from Jun 2007 to Dec 2008 or just using other units assessed value? You need to use similar sold properties.

I am using similar units and their assessed values as well as sales durin ghtat period. I'm in a new building where the first units didn't sell until the end of 2007.

sunsprit · 07-29-2009, 09:32 AM

You also must keep in mind that the time frame for the comps/assessor's valuation is from a prior year period. In a declining market, those comps may be higher than the current marketplace.

Also, while your purchase price may be much lower than the "fair market value" of the property due to a number of distress issues or the seller's situation (or from a repo file, etc ... where a "short sale" has taken place), that doesn't necessarily represent what the market data shows you property to be worth by the assessor's standards. You may have gotten a "great deal" on the purchase price, but the assessor is bound by law to appraise the property at it's fair market value.