It is just my observation. May not work for everybody. I work and invest in Midwest.
It seams that many properties around here are appraised too high and most people do nothing about it. I go and appeal every single appraisal and so far was very successful dropping my taxes by over 50% on average.
I got that habit because I bought my first house cash and tax bill came right before Christmas. That was painful so I went ahead and appealed following year saving abouth 1k that year. Most people have it spread out and it doesn’t hurt as much when in monthly payments with mortgage and insurance.
It takes a little effort to take photographs and find comps but even if you drop your appraisal by 20% where I live on decent SFH it means $600 a year possibly for next 4 years. I think it’s worth it.
Now that I think about it, some people would be better off having as high appraisal as possible especially that many lenders or potential buyers like to look at them…
Basically I take 10-20 photographs of the ugliest aspects of the property and create few page document with detailed descriptions what they show. I also try to include some comps. In my low income areas I am always able to find few properties that are cheaper than mine for various reasons (often serious structural problems and so on, I know it 's stretching the truth a little). I include MLS listings of those properties or deeds from fiscal court database.
Obviously if I buy a house way below market value I take my deed and show it to them. They always like to use last sale praise if it was higher than previous appraisal but you have to make them lower the appraisal if it was highest than the last sale praise.
So I meet some clerk with all those papers and he/she makes a recommendation to some committee to accept or refuse. I don’t think that there is any committee, at least for cheap properties. In case this committee refuses your appeal, you can appeal one more time.
Last time I went with my HUD house that I bought for $17k and the appraisal was $70k. I told the clerk that HUD usually is pretty close to FMV so the appraisal should reflect it. Get this: she told me that HUD sometimes sells properties way cheaper below FMV because they are in bad condition! How stupid can you be and work in PVA office…
Nevertheless they lowered the appraisal to what I wanted. The only downside of this is I may have some problems when getting HML loan or when prospective buyer goes to PVA to look at the house value which in reality is about $40k. Of course in most cases they will have an independent appraiser.
They circumvent that here by keeping the appraisals low and just jacking up the millage rates to “create” the income stream they need! A[ppraisals are ruuning at about 40-70% of actual value, so no one ever appeals.
Apparently, you have a reading/understanding, as well as a mathematical, deficiency…?
In terms of reality in property value, tax apparaisals rarely reflect anything near what the property is REALLY worth. That is not what tax appraisals are for. Tax appraisals are used to generate the tax base for a tax authority NOT as a reflections of actual value. That is not really that hard.
Secondly, kindly tell me how “40-70%” makes a $100K property worth $17K…??? Here, it is highly likely that a $100K property has a tax appraisal of $40K to $70K…
“Apparently, you have a reading/understanding, as well as a mathematical, deficiency…?”
I’m not some math guru by my math is good enough for this. It is good enough to work instructor at engineering department of the local university.
Secondly, kindly tell me how “40-70%” makes a $100K property worth $17K…??? Here, it is highly likely that a $100K property has a tax appraisal of $40K to $70K…
There you go… Three posts up, you wrote “Appraisals are ruuning at about 40-70% of actual value, so no one ever appeals.”
My house was appraised at $70k. If it’s 70% of actual value the actual value is $100k. I bought it for $17k. Good deal. It really is worth about $40k because this is how much I was offered for it lately. The whole calculation may be worthless but not flawed logically. I intended my previous post to be more like a teaser.
Finally, you can call me mathematically deficient, you can call me stupid but don’t you, I say don’t you call me no ------- democrat!
Have a good day and see you on some other thread as this one’s becoming too long
