Fitzgerald tosses reassessment...? (Pittsburgh, Fox Chapel: public school, tax rates, homeowner)

[gg]

Originally Posted by Velvet Jones

I still don't follow your logic. If someone has been paying $1500 a year on a house that is worth $200k and now they have to pay $4500 I'm not going to shed a tear for them. Everyone else had been paying the full rate for the past decade, why should certain people continue to skate by? Now if they soundly appraise a run down shack in a bad neighborhood at $500k then I can see the complaint. People still have no idea what their taxes will be until the new millage is released, so for now it is all speculation.

Here is some logic for you. The model for the 22 million dollar or whatever it cost the tax payer reassessment, is a joke. How can they do an assessment not considering current sales compatibles? They can't. That is why the whole thing is one big waste of taxpayer money. It is totally inaccurate. What until all the court costs start costing the tax payer more money. Was all this actually worth it?

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

How can they do an assessment not considering current sales compatibles? They can't.

And for the millionth time, they didn't.

[Copanut]

They used comparable sales in the computer model. What the socalled news stations are reporting are the glitches.

[ML North]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Here is some logic for you. The model for the 22 million dollar or whatever it cost the tax payer reassessment, is a joke. How can they do an assessment not considering current sales compatibles? They can't. That is why the whole thing is one big waste of taxpayer money. It is totally inaccurate. What until all the court costs start costing the tax payer more money. Was all this actually worth it?

I think the following charts, from Nullspace, indicate that the reassessment was very accurate for homes >$200k, and better than the 2002 values for those on the lower end. And of course the appeal process should help to improve the accuracy for assessments <$200k.

[BrianTH]

Note that if anything, it looks like the erred on the low side with the $200K+ assessments.

Incidentally, I bet with some additional analysis of Briem's dataset, you could make a decent guesstimate of exactly how much risk there is that if the PPS sets its millage now, it will face a serious shortfall following appeals. And just eyeballing it, and understanding that the revenues collected are a function of property value as well--I'd say that risk is pretty low. In fact if you considered possible offsetting appeals by the PPS as well, I'd say there is virtually no risk at all.

[BrianTH]

Yet another invaluable contribution from Briem:

Nullspace: Like the square root of negative one

Map of properties looking at a 10% or more tax increase:



Map of properties looking at a 10% or more tax decrease:

[Aqua Teen Carl]

I'm so damn confused at this point, it's impossible to keep track. Anyone care to summarize?

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

I'm so damn confused at this point, it's impossible to keep track. Anyone care to summarize?

Sure:

(1) In the City, the residential total appreciated pretty well, the commercial total appreciated even better, which means approximately 65% of residential owners in the City are actually looking at a tax cut whenever the new numbers get used, whereas the offsetting tax increases will be mostly concentrated among the commercial properties and in a few gentrifying neighborhoods (I expect an overall similar pattern countywide, but that remains to be seen);

(2) Although there were certainly some errors, even before the appeals process the new numbers look a lot more accurate overall than the old numbers;

(3) In an effort to stop this process, Fitzgerald announced that the County was taking back the new numbers and cancelling the appeals;

(4) The court has ordered that as of now, municipalities and school districts cannot use the old numbers for their 2012 tax bills;

(5) The court has also ordered lower-level County officials to continue with the reassessment process as previously scheduled by the court, or face contempt charges (meaning fines and possibly imprisonment) themselves;

(6) On Thursday, the court will decide if the alleged uncertainty about millages and actual revenues arising from the possible outcomes of the appeals process is a sufficient ground to let the Pittsburgh Public Schools hold off using the new numbers until next year.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

I'm so damn confused at this point, it's impossible to keep track. Anyone care to summarize?

Hard to summarize a mess.

Again, my old rental is assessed way lower than my old neighbor's home, which was about double. It should be the other way around. That is not some chart or silly statistic. That is a hard fact. The commercial building I am looking at, or was, is going to be way over assessed. Yet another hard fact and not some graph. These are buildings I know first hand and know them well. I also have over 20 years real estate experience. Sure, you armchair quarterbacks can say all you like to defend our county as people are leaving to greener pastures, but I know real life situations that are obviously out of whack and I am not alone. The millions and millions spent and the millions to defend those millions are a mess. Therefore, you can't summarize this disaster.

[BrianTH]

(7) A few people and a regrettable portion of the media are continuing to insist we should focus on anecdotes (many of which, it turns out, are based on faulty math).