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I think I have this but am looking for comfirmation or explations, further info.
On our county websites there are both assessments and appraisals.
Assessments are what your property taxes are based off of and not reflections of the "value" of your home.
1 appraisal: County/political entity does appraisals to make some determination of the "value" of a home (not a market value though) to have a number to base the assessment/taxed value off of.
2 appraisal: The kind of appraisal is the bank appraisal - more of a market value - to make sure that the house is worth the amount of the loan.
Question? - if county appraisals aren't market value - i.e. no relation to what you would buy and sell a house for - why do they seem to be going down?
What is Zillow's assessed on? I know they are considered unreliable - is that because they are pulled from county websites?
I think I have this but am looking for comfirmation or explations, further info.
Question? - if county appraisals aren't market value - i.e. no relation to what you would buy and sell a house for - why do they seem to be going down?
What is Zillow's assessed on? I know they are considered unreliable - is that because they are pulled from county websites?
Giesela,
You are correct Zillows "values" are strange? From what I can see say there is a street with 3 houses for sale...one of them is a bank owned repo. The other 2 houses are priced at current market value. We determine CMAs by comparing features, # of bedrooms, baths, etc and the comparable type homes in the area and their sold prices. IF the bank repo sells for $20K less than the other 2 on the street, zillow apparently averages the prices out and then says thats the current value of homes in the area. Its not that simple, nor accurate to say that. Repos are often in terrible shape requiring that the new owner put much work/$ into it to bring it up to habitable. That being said, I know there are some neighborhoods where there are so many repos that it IS driving the prices of the surrounding properties down.
Then you throw in the county assessors who only "assess" your property every couple of years using "market" value and that creates another whole can of worms. My house was last assessed in 2006 at the height of the market, so I got to pay more property taxes than I should have had to pay. Market value tax assessment is notoriously unreliable and often unfair to the property owners and why you have a process of contesting that information in most areas.
Finally you put in the appraisers who are often hired by banks to appraise a property for a loan. The banks, understandably are being ULTRA conservative these days and therefore the appraisals often are ultra conservative in declaring a value as well.
Its all subjective to a point. A house is now and always has been worth whatever someone else is willing to spend to buy it. Determining that these days is the trick! One tip as to trying to figure it all out. Make sure you have data that is no more than 60 days old. The market is changing so quickly, you really have to have up to date information in order to be as accurate as possible.
I guess I don't understand why the county has a house appraised at 140K (say for example, assessed is much less) that is being marketed at 180K (down from 190K) and was bought for 175K in 2005 - when this is an area where the market has been, at least theoretically more or less flat (midwest). Zillow est around 140K which is similar to the county. Its a rural(ish) property. I find that if your not looking in suburbs things/pricing tends to get even more bewildering.
Our house is appraised by the county at more than our sale price. Since we bought in 2005 our value accordig to them has gone up 86,500-go figure. Guess they want more taxes so they just keep upping the value.
Many counties have laws that state that property taxes are based on a percentage of the appraised value, which is what the assessed value is. Yes property taxes will be going down for many because the appraised value will change which will cause a change in the assessed value.
Homeowners typically have to contest it though. I just did a CMA for a former client so he could contest the appraised value and they changed his appraised value to current market value.
Zillow has an algorithm for their zestimates. They pull data for the county and it is one of the factors they use, but it is not the only piece of data they use.
Not sure how it works in Oregon, but in my neck of the woods if property values were to FALL across the board the taxes I pay would NOT go down. The "millage" would be adjust to a larger percent of the new lower assessed value.
Taxes would only go down if the taxing districts requested less money, which just dow not happen...
Not sure how it works in Oregon, but in my neck of the woods if property values were to FALL across the board the taxes I pay would NOT go down. The "millage" would be adjust to a larger percent of the new lower assessed value.
Taxes would only go down if the taxing districts requested less money, which just dow not happen...
So if someone bought a $400,000 home and then it dropped in value to $300,000, there is no way for them to decrease the property taxes on the home?
I had a realtor here tell me that typically a house sells for 10-20% more than the assessed value.
I thought that was weird but started comparing List price to assessed price + the percentage and it was pretty much ball park. Not sure if thats still holding true right now.
So if someone bought a $400,000 home and then it dropped in value to $300,000, there is no way for them to decrease the property taxes on the home?
... if most /all of the properties drop in value the millage would go up by a similar amount. The "caps" are on the levy, NOT the millage.
Example:
Whole town has $2B in assessed value, total levies for all the fire districts, mosquito abatement districtss, park districts, schools districts comes to $50M.
Total millage will be .025.
If all the assessed values go down (just to keep it simple I am going to grossly exagerate...) to $1B, the fire fighters still need to fuel the trucks, the skeeters still need to sprayed, the parks mowed, the kids educated. Levies are STILL $50M. Millage has to be .05...
Now the differences in commercial property, residential and new construction /existing are going to make things more complicated, but I am pretty sure the basics of separation of the assessments from the levy and then the millage are pretty universal.
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In my neck of woods...
