Real Estate Property Taxes and Assessment Loopholes
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Blanket assessments are made in a community to re-assess the property tax. Little time is allowed for this approximation of value and inaccuracies often creep in. It’s not unusual that a multiplier factor is used to adjust property values.
Appraisal companies bid for the blanket reappraisal contract for a community. The low bid wins the contract. Ask yourself if the bid allocation was $35 per home, how much time could be spent on that appraisal? Consider the appraiser has to make a profit for his effort further reducing the time allotment to appraise. Often college kids or those with little appraisal experience are employed.
Errors frequently occur when blanket appraisers do their job. Furthermore, if the original assessment was in error, employing multipliers to roll over previous years assessments is invalid.
If the building and tax department cooperated, there would be no need for a blanket reappraisal. Building permits and final market values could be incorporated into the individual values of homes with the tax role. There would be no need for blanket reassessment duplicating already established values.
The department of the tax assessor is usually small and little time is available for the assessor. Rarely do they appraise a home personally. The tax assessor job is often a politically appointed position. Tax assessors do not take the time and are not generally trained to do a complete market appraisal of a home. Often they use a completely different method (cost method) of appraising a home.
In a property tax appeal, only the market appraisal counts. That means that your home stacks up to the current selling price of your comparable homes and that becomes the only solid evidence of value.
A huge amount of money is spent on blanket municipal appraisals. Sure they may catch the occasional patio or shed built without a permit, but that does not warrant the extra appraisal cost.
Blanket reassessments are opportunities for appeal because of the high error rate. Homeowners need to do a simple analysis to determine if their home’s market value is in line with the assessed value assigned to their home.
