Appraisal needed for contesting Property Tax Assessment

[LCTMadison]

It will...you can get comps from MLS to argue property tax assessment. I had several clients last year request comparable sales, and all were successful in getting the tax assessor to lower appraised value.

[pyro4ik]

I'm new to this stuff......would there be a situation where you want the value to be higher?

[Marc45002]

Originally Posted by pyro4ik

I'm new to this stuff......would there be a situation where you want the value to be higher?

There will be plenty of situations when you want the "appraisal" to be higher but I can't think of a single situation wherein you want the "assessed value" to be higher.

Marc

[walkies]

The whole process is poorly documented, and confusing. Infact, I think it is completely made up. lol. Although we do pay alot less property tax than many other states So here's my situation:

In 2010 we bought our house for 199k. The appraisal by the firm the mortgage company hired was 200k.

In 2010, Madison county appraised it for 173k, this year for 184k.

Both years the county assessed the land value as 30k... So apparently they assessed the building value as having raised 10k in one year when we have done nothing to the building out/inside to boost it's value. Even with our area weathering the economic storm better than some, I think we can be certain that the economy has not boosted the value of the building! lol

I used the emaps page to check the properties around us, and similar properties to ours were appraised for similar values.

This begs two questions:
1) Can I/should I fight the 10k increase?
2) If not, should I just count my blessings that my house is appraised for tax purposes significantly less than what it appraised for at mortgage? Although at this rate 10k/yr, it will be worth more than I paid in 2 years...

[friday13]

Originally Posted by walkies

This begs two questions:
1) Can I/should I fight the 10k increase?
2) If not, should I just count my blessings that my house is appraised for tax purposes significantly less than what it appraised for at mortgage? Although at this rate 10k/yr, it will be worth more than I paid in 2 years...

It's up to you: We bought our house in NE Hsv in 2005 for $140,000.
For the first couple years, we didn't know about the assessor's website, we 'd get the statement from the mortgage company (escrow), and dilligently pay (appraised value crept up to $170,000 over couple years). But two years ago we bothered to pay closer look to the county-issued tax notice only when the tax itself went up significantly/noticeable. The county-appraised value was a shocking $200,900 (no way that would've have been the fair market value, even in the best of times, and I'm not in denial).
That was the wake up call for me, my husband wasn't a bit bothered (he's not the combative type), he said it wasn't worth his time (day off) to go in front of the BOE to protest $100 but I couldn't get over psychological mark of $200k. So, I made him go. He was presented with a "deal' on the spot: accept a a reduction to $196k right there, or come back and contest in front of the BOE. Which one you think he chose? ! The more expensive, but hassle-free option. He was happy to pay and go on his merry way. His reasoning: $100 over the entire year. It didn't seem that 'expensive' to him, when he put it that way.
These days homes in my area sell to about 2006 levels (bad schools dragging values down)

In your case, if you live in Hsv, and claim homestead, the $10k value increase only translates into $58 tax increase (over one year). The question is: if the county keeps assessing $10k every year and you keep paying without blinking, how could you protest say $35k over market value at the end of five years? (some market appreciation may occur, I assumed only $15k).

I do believe this is their new approach: siphon out not-worth-the-trouble-to-dispute, $maller amounts periodically, rather than a more noticeable amount every four years. And this is in fact the directive from the governor: assessments are to be done every year. But it seems that County only goes up with the values, regardless of the market (fair and reasonable value).

I posted this before - I once tried to read about County's methodology to assess properties. (I like to do my homework before I enter an argument). All I could found (might've saved it somewhere) was an assessor office's PDF where it said (roughly): the county assessors were to drive around and observe from their car. That was the appraised value!!


Property owners can contest appraised value | al.com
The worth of a home - fair market value versus appraised value | al.com

[LCTMadison]

As far as tax assessment being "higher" than actual market value...there are SOME buyers who give a lot of credence to what the tax assessor states as their valuation. My tax assessment shows value a bit higher than my 2010 appraisal, and it affects my taxes less than $100 a year, so I have left it alone for that reason. I always discourage clients from using the tax assessor's data in their decision making for a particular property, but there are those that look at that data combined with market comps to justify an offer price for property.

For the record, the tax assessor is very rarely accurate on anything...square footage, valuation, ect. MLS committee removed the option last year to site the tax assessor as the source of square footage, but of course many agents still use it (and reference tax data in the agent remarks as their sft source). As far as valuations, since they have moved to a yearly reassessment, blanket assessments have become very commonplace (where they increase a general area by a set percentage regardless of the actual real estate market conditions in a particular neighborhood, ect).

I would recommend contacting your Realtor and asking for as many good comparables from the past year as you can get. The tax assessor's office in both Madison as well as Limestone County is usually very agreeable to adjust your assessed value if you are armed with solid sold data to support your claim.

[Pirat_cat]

Our first year living in the house the county apparently decided our property was worth 330k--completely ridiculous since we'd paid about 250 for it only 6 months earlier. We were prepared to fight it however was necessary since it was so far off, but luckily we still had the appraisal from when we purchased the house and sent the county a copy. They lowered the assessment with no further effort required from us but I was still taken aback by how far off they were initially. Although it did increase this year, it's still not even close to their initial wild guess of 330k.

[friday13]

Exactly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and the (unjustified) assessment reduced.