This one journey has finally come to an end. No, not the blog – our property tax fiasco.
Just over 11 months after appealing our grossly unfair property tax reassessment to the State Property Tax Appeal Board (PTAB), our case has finally been decided. In case you’ve forgotten the details over the last year and a half, I’ll recap:
December 2007
We received our property tax assessment for the 2007 tax year and it increased by 15% and was set $50,000 higher than our home’s resale value. I immediately contacted the county alerting them that I would contest the assessment.
January 2008
We met with the county Assessment Board to lay out our case that the house was unfairly assessed and to provide the credit union’s appraisal from when we purchased the house 1 1/2 years earlier as evidence. We were told to wait until at least March before they released their decision.
May 2008
We finally received our reassessment (2 months late). It was reassessed to $235,575 – still $25,000 higher than the credit union’s appraisal. We then hired the appraisal company to perform a new full appraisal of our house for $300 to submit as evidence to the PTAB. The new appraisal came back at $221,000. That was higher than I wanted, but still $14,575 less than the county’s assessed value. We overnighted the appraisal and appropriate property tax assessment appeal forms to the PTAB and awaited their decision.
Today
After contacting the PTAB numerous times over the last 11 months by phone and by their website, we finally received a letter announcing that they ruled completely in our in favor and adjusted our assessment to $221,000! They have even instructed the county to refund us what we overpaid on the tax.
SUCCESS!
My quick calculations show that we’ll likely receive a refund of around $260. While this is less than the amount we paid for the appraisal, this reassessment will save us for many years to come. Not only are we entitled to a refund of last year’s paid taxes, our taxes for this year will be lower and will continue to be lower until the county assesses our property again. (And I’ll be ready to appeal again when they do!)
It may have been a long, frustrating, and drawn-out experience, but it’s proof that you can successfully challenge your taxes if you are persistent and have truth on your side. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to celebrate!
UPDATE
I received the refund check in the mail today (15 May 2009) and it was for over $600! Apparently, the state made this the actual assessed value of the property instead of adding the expected multiplier. That means I got back more than double what I paid for my private appraisal. Talk about a great investment!
Photo by: Amit Gupta
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Hey good for you! My aunt works for the surveyor’s department and she and I were talking about this very thing recently. She says that very few people win these types of cases, although from what it sounds like, very few are as prepared as you are.
sounds like you were extremely prepared, and had good documentation to prove your case. good job!
I keep meaning to do this, but have been too lazy/preoccupied to follow through :)
Wow, this is excellent news. Congratulations and way to stick with it…dealing with gov’t on any scale can be so discouraging and impossible. What a blessing!
Hooray for you! It’s rare that someone has the fortitude to take on the government and follow through to the end. You are an example of making the system work.
Sorry I’m a little late here. But you spent $300 on an appraisal, and it only worked out that you’re saving $260 on the taxes? I must be missing something….
Good work! I considered trying, since they’re madly jacking up our tax rates… But wow, what a hassle! Just to fill out the form, you have to find out what other properties around you actually sold for (which entails getting an agent to look it up for you) AND enter the parcel number and a second arcane numeral. The county used to publish these data online, by the address, but because of privacy concerns (believe it or not they actually used to publish the owners’ social security numbers) they’ve removed all that information from their site. So unless a Realtor could get it from the MLS, you’d have to physically go down to the County Recorder’s office to dig up the specifics on the sold properties you’d identified.
Obviously, the assessor has no intention of changing the tax assessments here! :-D
Brian,
I saved $260 against one year’s worth of taxes, but I will save this year and continue to save in the future because it pushed my assessment lower. While my taxes will rise again in the future, they will always be lower than if I hadn’t appealed. In the end, I will save hundreds, if not thousands, because I won the appeal. I had hoped to save more than the cost of my appraisal in one year, but I will save more than its cost in the long run.