Just yesterday we received a notice in the mail that our house had been revalued by our local assessor. The notice was complete with supporting documentation, including recent home sales in our neighborhood, annual home price fluctuations for our community of 1,500, and laws and ordinances regarding home assessments. Long story short, our house is now assessed for $39,100 more than it was just a few days ago, a 22% increase.
My gut reaction was to fight the revaluation. We have recent appraisals that support a much lower value (and could probably successfully fight to get it lowered), but I know that our house is worth the new assessed value, and we would be fairly likely to sell it for that amount if we choose to. As a matter of fact, we are pretty lucky that we've gotten by this long without a revaluation. However, the new value also means a potential property tax increase of $600+ annually. This number is dependent on how much our mil rate ends up being, as well as the amount of which all the other households were impacted by the revaluation. If everyone's house is now worth 22% more, then our taxes won't go up much, if at all. If everyone's value stayed stagnant while ours went up, we are in for a big bill.
But then I was thinking... should we decide to sell our house in the near future, that higher assessed value would actually be beneficial. Not because people like paying property taxes, but because lots of people compare the assessed value to the asking price when evaluating the "value" of a property. I know it doesn't work that way, and so do many other people, but that doesn't stop it from happening.
So I'm still debating. The cheapskate in me wants to fight the new assessment, but the logical part of my brain is telling me to let it be... we might be happy to have that high valuation someday.
2 comments:
Great debate idea. This really comes down to how long you plan to live in your home. If it is 5+ years I would go fight it immediately. If it is for less, your strategy isn't that crazy considering today's average home buyer's property evaluation process these days.
Love your blog, keep up the great work!
-walker56
Was this the county's appraiser? If so, here's what I know about it:
My father is a real estate appraiser, and this is how it works in his state... The county appraiser does a sort of drive-by appraisal of the house that is rife with errors (square footage is a big one, year of construction, etc.) and inflated so the county can raise your taxes. When the house is selling, the bank has the home reappraised as a matter of course, and uses that assessment, paying NO attention to the county's valuation.
Provided it works this way in your state, my father would tell you to get your taxes lowered, because the county's appraisal won't effect your home's sale price, and reasonable taxes are also a selling point.
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