Re-Challenged My Property Tax Assessment
Filed under: Taxes
Way back in January, I wrote that I was challenging our very unfair property tax assessment. Finally, last month, we received the review board’s reassessment. They dropped the assessor’s valuation of our property by $25,000, but it was still $29,000 more than our purchase price from just 2 years ago. My wife and I decided to hire an appraiser to come in and get a full valuation on our property.
The appraiser came in, measured all our rooms, and retreated to his offices to do the necessary research. On Friday, he returned the results of his full appraisal: $221,000. Ouch! That is $15,000 more than what we purchased it for 2 years ago. Any other time, this would be a welcome change, but when you’re trying to challenge your property tax, you want an assessment as low as possible.
Fortunately, this assessment was still $14,000 less than the property tax review board’s recommendation. This was a sufficient difference to justify the hassle of appealing this to the state. We overnighted the necessary paperwork and copies of our appraisal to the state property tax review board’s office. Hopefully the week-old appraisal, complete with 4 comparable properties, will be enough to convince them to not gouge us for more money that we don’t have. I really hope the state will side with us and correct the huge, glaring mistake the county has made, since there is no higher avenue for appeal outside of a lawsuit - which would be prohibitively expensive considering the “relatively” small difference in value.
Wish us luck!
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