tax appeals (sales, how much, house)

[sweetmomi]

If you think your taxes are too high based on value of your house, how do you appeal?

[sweetmomi]

never mind, found answer on my township'swebsite.

[Calico696]

I would like to know if anyone has had any luck with their appeal?

[MattNJ]

same here, has anyone had success with this? If so how much did the taxes go down?

[NatasNJ]

I am buying a property and plan to appeal myself. I know if you are assessed at 15% or more than fair market value it is a slam dunk it seems to get them to fix it. Below 15% and you are pretty much depending on them to be fair and throw you a bone it seems. Of course the property I am buying is 12% over assessed. doh!

[M & K]

I will be doing this myself once I get my little green postcard in the mail. Right now they are accessing me at nearly 40% higher than the recent appraisal I had done on my house. Seems like a real pain to do this, but it will be worth it if successful.

[tahiti]

Originally Posted by Calico696

I would like to know if anyone has had any luck with their appeal?

My neighbor did this past year....not sure how much they went down though. Obrero was successful I believe too.

Just make sure you use valid comps in the right time period (which now is October 08 - October 09). I was denied since there were direct comps that sold early in my appeal window (October 06 before the market really tanked) that I didn't use, I used homes that sold later but weren't direct comparables (because there weren't any). Oh well.

[tahiti]

Originally Posted by M & K

I will be doing this myself once I get my little green postcard in the mail. Right now they are accessing me at nearly 40% higher than the recent appraisal I had done on my house. Seems like a real pain to do this, but it will be worth it if successful.

if the appraisal was done with valid comparables in the right selling timeframe, you might have a case. see my post above. you can use the sale of your house as a comparable, but you'll need more.

[Obrero]

Originally Posted by Calico696

I would like to know if anyone has had any luck with their appeal?

Yes, we did it the year after we bought our house (using our purchase as one of the comps). We were lucky because the next year they did a town wide reassessment so assessment values were brought down and nobody could prove they were at least 15% over assessed. (But of course the tax rate was increased so actual tax bill didn't lower.)

[Obrero]

Originally Posted by M & K

I will be doing this myself once I get my little green postcard in the mail. Right now they are accessing me at nearly 40% higher than the recent appraisal I had done on my house. Seems like a real pain to do this, but it will be worth it if successful.

Hopefully you have comps of recent sales to use. They won't allow you to use an appraisal.