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Buying and Selling Homes

Property Tax ? For Realtors

14 years ago

I am in the process of challenging my property tax assessment. I am unsure if the fact that our neighborhood elementary school is closing should also be a factor and, if so, how much that may reduce the value. Our new school is about the same distance; however, it will now require students in our tract to cross a major street w/no plans to add a crosswalk or crossing guard, although they can walk down to the next street where there is a light, but that would add approx 1/2-3/4 mile each way.

We bought this house with the anticipation that our kids would be able to walk to school on their own and now - at least in the foreseeable future- they will not be able to w/o an adult. The comparables I have to use are based on Jan. 1st which was before the final school closing decision was made. I was hoping some of you realtors out there may be able to help. I am in SoCal and the property tax assessment was only reduced by 6% by the county. TIA

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Comments (6)

Linda
14 years ago
Something like that would not change the value of your house in my area. School district matters, not if you walk, bus or walk further to get to a crossing guard.
qs777
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks, Linda. I kind of thought that would be the case even though it definitely would change the value for us if we were to buy a house here today. I guess I will just base my value on the comparables. Thanks again!
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Your property taxes will be 1% of the purchase price plus misc assessments and bonds. So, $325,000 @ 1% = $3,250 per year, plus whatever school bonds and the like have been added for your area. Also, if your property is subject to Mello-Roos, you will have an add'l assessment for that also. If you are in the CITY of San Diego (not just San Diego County), you will have an assessment for city services such as garbage pickup. The previous owner probably paid $6,000 per year because their purchase price was in the $500,000++ range. If the value of your property goes DOWN, you can apply for reassessment. Otherwise, your property tax will increase by a modest amount annually as limited by Prop 13. At this point, Prop 13 primarily benefits folks who have owned their home for a long time, long before the price spikes of the late 1990's and 2000's. Their taxes were also based on 1% of the purchase price, with limited annual increases. Because their purchase price was relatively low, their taxes are much lower also. Amongst other things, it was a way to help older folks keep their property taxes somewhat modest as home prices skyrocketed around them. Hope this helps.
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it certainly does not hurt to try and get a review, especially if vales are lower than what your assessment has. until a couple of yrs ago alot of FL homeowners were getting reassessments but then our taxes were significantly cut. i used to pay 4X what I do now and for a few yrs in a row i had to pay the shortages, couple times it was thousands of $$. then they ended up w several thousand $$ extra and of course you can not access that $$ and you pay taxes on it. since taxes came down, my overages were rolled over and my payment went down. i refinanced in Jan just as values have been starting to trend back up, now my payment is 1/2 of what it was. we just voted in a mileage rate increase FINALLY so taxes go up a tiny bit. the county lost 1.5% in sales taxes in 2011 + loss of property taxes and every semester they close 5 more schools and lay off thousands more teachers. they desperately need the increase, we have A+ schools here and my property someday selling well depends on my cities school staying open which it may not (chopping block for 1 yr now). ~ liz
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Timely subject. Our neighborhood just received our property tax assessments for 2016, payable in 2017. Our property taxes have gone up 45%. Our home values have not. We had a refi appraisal within the last year & our home value was less than the current property taxes, prior to this increase. A 45% increase & our taxes are already high. Illinois is number 50, of 50 states, in public pension debt. In the recent past, the federal government has given Illinois stimulus money for education. The majority of that money has NOT gone to schools & students - it has paid for pension debt. We're going to need another bailout from the states that have been fiscally responsible. Edit: We will be appealing - we do every year. The first time we used an attorney, whose fee was 50% of of the tax savings. Then we started doing it ourselves. We have the choice to appeal based on "uniformity" or "overvaluation." "Uniformity" involves collecting & submitting comps of other comparable homes. "Overvaluation" is submitting a home appraisal with a date of Jan 1, 2016 so we get tax credit for the entire year. We've had better results with the home appraisal, overvaluation method. Everyone in our neighborhood's home value has jumped up by between $200,000 - $400,000, according to the taxing authority. I'd have no problem with it if our home value had truly increased, but it hasn't.
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brickeyee
14 years ago
Is the new school as good as the old?
Test scores, etc.

Even in areas with very good schools they are seldom uniform across the county or school district.
qs777
Original Author
14 years ago
Yes, the school scores and school facilities were very similar so we really couldn't complain. The other school that was closed at the same time, however, had more of a problem in that their area's existing schools had much lower scores. Of course the parents were labeled as racist because they didn't want their kids to go to lower-performing schools that happened to be far away and difficult to get to. It was a mess for a long time with how the school district handled this which (I believe) is why I only have about 4 comparable sales to use.
ncrealestateguy
14 years ago
When you present all of your evidence to the county, I would use everything... comps, the school closing, and anything else i could get hold of. But like Linda says, the school thing is stretching it.
qs777
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks, everyone. I will use anything I can and see what happens. It seems that things are starting to sell pretty quickly now in this area in the low, mid and mid-upper range so I feel like this is my last chance to pay lower taxes.

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