Cordovamom, somebody knocked on your door, said they were a tax assessor and YOU LET THEM IN?

Wow, I wouldn't have done that no matter what kind of credentials they produced.

I'd want a letter from the gov first, a time when the guy is coming out, the guy's name that would be coming out, and THEN I'd want to see credentials and a marked car.

Be careful...

You're right, disney, I'm way too trusting and my hubby complains about it all the time. I did look at his credentials, they seemed to be in order. He didn't actually walk through the home, just stood in the entry way and asked the questions. My hubby pointed out that he could have asked questions from the front porch just as easily. I think I was just surprised to see an official from the assessor's office at my front door and my old fashioned upbringing to respect authority just kicked in.

I'm pretty surprised at how many people allow the assessor inside their homes. That would be uncommon in my area as it was in NH when we lived there. In NH, we successfully challenged our assessment without anybody ever stepping a foot on our property. We just went with the assessments of the neighbors (our whole street, actually) & pointed out the differences between ours & the other houses. They lowered our assessment $50K on the spot which we thought was fair.

Another regional difference comes to light on the Forum...very interesting.

/tricia

When our city was doing revaluations, they sent a letter to tell people what days the person would be in their neighborhood. My husband happened to be home and let the assessor (contracted guy, really) come inside. He gave him a cup of coffee. He showed him all the "awful" things about our house that we didn't have money to improve. We got a very low assessment for our neighborhood. I couldn't have been more pleased.

Then when we went to sell, we had a bit of trouble with buyers questioning our price relative to our assessment. We told them to check out other homes in the neighborhood, and get back to us. We got a full price offer, but it was funny that the low assessment might've worked against us.

lorraine -- I know where you're coming from. One area of the country that we lived in back in the 80's, it was common to double the assessed value of the home to get an approximation of the fair market value of the home. When my hubby and I were looking to buy a home back then if doubling the assessed value was a lot lower then what the sellers were asking, we'd really look harder at the property and comps to see why they were asking more than double their assessed value.

Since you just bought the property it doesn't seem like they could appraise it for more than you paid.

We just closed and the appraisal for our mortgage came in $5K above the selling price. Shocked the heck out of me. I don't think the appraiser go the memo that we'd negotiated another $5K price drop after her was originally contracted to do the job. lol

around here they base the assessment on the sales price. they are SUPPOSED to reassess every 5 years even if no sale, but rarely do. for a business they actually make a walk thru, but for residential they jsut look over comps and adjust you based on that, they don't even drive by.

as to that sunroom, if it was done without a permit they CAN make you tear it down plus fine YOU for illegal work. they may not, but they can.

We just closed and the appraisal for our mortgage came in $5K above the selling price. Shocked the heck out of me. I don't think the appraiser go the memo that we'd negotiated another $5K price drop after her was originally contracted to do the job. lol

You know that your appraisal for your mortgage and your property tax assessment have nothing to do with each other, right?

Well aware, yes. Just never had a mortgage appraisal come in over the required amount and found it amusing.

To all of you. Find out how qualified/training your Tax Assessor is/has. In many areas in the country, any one can be a Tax Assessor. In our area one of our local farmers is. Yes he does have a college degree and owns a business but has limited training in assessing property. No certification is required, etc. Could be a political job also and that is where some of the major problems come in. We have seen properties valued high, because someone has issues with the person, and the city counsel goes along with the reports.
If you feel you are being valued too high and your local government refuses to cooperate, contact your state government.

around here they base the assessment on the sales price.

That's what they do here in SoCal, too. You can also look up your neighbor's tax payment online, as well. So I happen to know that I'm paying about $6000+ a year, and those neighbors that have lived here for 20 odd years are only paying a few hundred. Yay for Prop 13, I guess.

We have had assessors come to the house, and it's ironic that one of us has always been at home when they were done. They did not notify us of any specific time, like an appointment, they just happen in like a census taker might. The notices were posted in the paper, however, that assessment in the county would occur in a certain timeframe.

In all instances, the assessor did not come in, nor even ask to. He walked around a lot outside, however. They did ask a list of questions about the interior. They just took our word for it and the questions were specific. They wanted to know if we had fireplace stacks, basements, what kind of heat, what kind of entrance box. He did measure the outside dimensions of the house and noted all the outbuildings. We had just painted our chicken shed, and even though it is seventy five years old, at least, was not on the list of outbuildings. I suppose it looked so decrepit that any previous assessor just didn't bother, considering it abandoned and ruined. So, that paint job cost us more than the paint. LOL. They were very kind with our other outbuildings, and their assessed value nowhere near reflected the cost of the structures. Our last assessor was not even local. He said the county hired a company who do nothing but make property assessments.

Homes in rural areas get closer scrutiny for assessments, because many of us do not have to obtain building permits .....so the re-assessments are the only way they can adjust evaluations.

Don't get too overjoyed if the previous owners didn't get a permit (if needed) to add on that sunroom. They go pretty easy on you here when buildings just pop up unexplained and simply add it to the assessment, but they could be hard-nosed about it. Real estate assessments are public knowledge, anyone can view the sketches and descriptions of what is taxed on the property. Our county has very accurate aerial maps of each property. I don't think they do this for the fun of it. LOL.

I'd let him in - it would give me the chance to show that I'm being assessed for 102 square feet more than my house actually is.

Sometime on some prior "drive by" inspection my back patio got assessed as interior space instead of being assessed as open patio space. Same thing could happen to you with that sunroom.

Around here, it doesn't matter if you have a state of the art updated kitchen. They just care about square footage, property size, # of bedrooms, etc. You can have a dream kitchen and your neigbhor's kitchen can be stuck in the 1960s and it doesn't matter. You will both be assessed the same (given all other things equal).

good point about sq ft. if an assessor were to measure the exterior of my home, it would look like we have over 120 sq ft more than we do since we have a large storage room off the garage. since it is not heated/cooled, it does not count toward true sq ft. but you cannot tell it is there from the outside, so a perimeter measurement would be real bad for us!

as to not needing a permit, until just a couple months ago we were the same way. you could do/build whatever and however you wanted if you lived in the county. there was 1 rule and only 1 rule, septic must be okayed by the health dept. if you wanted to build a house out of scrap material held together by bailing wire, there was nothing anyone could do to you if the septic tank and leech field were approved!

". Do you know if they pulled a permit? Did you get a copy of it at your closing? If they did not...then, for sure, I wouldn't let them on the property. "

Yeah, and if I were buying that house in the future, and noticed that there was no c/o for the sunroom, I'd walk.
SB Mom, did the sellers get a C/O ? Did you check? Where I lived, the current owner can wind up paying penalties for what previous owners did withoutr permits. Been there, done that, got the T shirt.

Realize that Big Brother is watchingÂwith the wonder of things like Google Earth, they can see your addition sooner or later anyway...so it is just a matter of time before you will have to pay up for the sunroom if it is not already on file...and chances are that if it is not on your CO, no permits...inspectionsÂÂor finals were obtained.

Better to get it all squared away now than later,Âwhich could prove far more costly.

Our town works on the premise that if you have window treatments on your basement window that obscure the view of the basement, they assume it is finished...and assess you accordingly...unless you prove otherwise.

"Around here, it doesn't matter if you have a state of the art updated kitchen. They just care about square footage, property size, # of bedrooms, etc. You can have a dream kitchen and your neigbhor's kitchen can be stuck in the 1960s and it doesn't matter. You will both be assessed the same (given all other things equal)."

See, that is something I just don't understand........We just moved into a "nicer" house in a little more upscale neighborhood, and the actual sq. footage is only about 300 sq.ft. more than our old one. But, according to tax records, our taxes will be more than double here than our previous house. So, how can they justify that??

Thanks for the input everyone! Now that you mention it, I am pretty sure that the previous owners did go through the permit process. I don't think we have any paperwork about the sunroom, but while we were negotiating, the realtor mentioned that the previous owners had to get a new high efficiency furnace so that the city would allow them to build the sunroom the way they wanted. So maybe the assessed value is accurate after all?

Assuming the sunroom is a red herring, I think it makes sense to go forward with the inspection, just to prove that we haven't done anything super fancy inside.

And if it turns out that they didn't have a permit for the sunroom, I'm pretty sure that the realtor would be on the hook for misrepresentation. Especially since she was a dual agent on the sale. Better to find out now than when we try to sell in five years!

"Yeah, and if I were buying that house in the future, and noticed that there was no c/o for the sunroom, I'd walk. "

Most places DO NOT issue a new CO after mods are made.
A FEW places revoke the previous CO when a sale occurs (NJ is one) but most never look again.

In Virginia a CO is about forever.
It is issued at original construction and never revoked unless you have a fire or other major damage.

Its pretty simple - if your house "shows" really well, then don't let them inside. If it looks really run down, then them see it. No matter what you decide, you will only be assessed up to your purchase price. My current home was appraised $30K over what I paid, and all I had to do was mail in a copy of my contract to tax district to get it lowered to my purchase price.

Funny story, we moved into our house a year and a half ago and got the tax bill, and the assessed value was 20k MORE than we paid for the house. So I sent them a letter saying, hey, you're way over for this house.

The average selling price in my neighborhood is 75K OVER the tax value, and here I was with my tax value being higher than the price of the house. The house is, of course, a wreck cosmetically which is why we got a good price for it.

I also included several tax values for my neighbors that were significantly lower than mine (public info, easily found online) and I got the taxes reduced to my selling price, which I think is still kind of high, but still a 20k reduction.

This year we get the tax bill again and they jacked the tax value up 20K! So now I'm back to where I started last year. D'oh!

So I look online and I find out that the neighbors that had the low tax assessments last year that I used for a comp have now gone WAY up. And I'm like, oh, crap, I think I threw my neighbors under the bus. And my house under the info for our purchase is now listed as "questionable sale".

What!?

So it now looks like Big Brother thinks something fishy was going on with the sale of our house, great. And now my neighbors are mad because everyone's taxes went up in our neighborhood, some by as much as 100k!!!!!

So the moral of my story is, say as little as possible, if that, and don't draw attention to yourself when it comes to the government.

I HOPE that you are truly assessed for the actual purchase price. It would be a lot simpler for me.

Because our seller shows on paperwork that he "bought" this house in March this year for 250K; not really true at all. He did some sort of "deal" with a trade in on another property. We bought it from him in July for 202K. Trust me, he did not lose any real money.

Taxes over $100k?!?!?

Yowza. Time to vote some people out of office.

I think Disneyrsh meant the value of the home was valued at 100k more; not that the taxes were that much more.

DGO, is your new house worth more than the other house was? If you are in a nicer neighborhood where all the houses around you are basically the same price, your tax assessments are usually more bc the houses are worth more.

It is funny that I read this last week thinking I didn't have any problems as we just bought last year and were reassessed at time of sale.

However, I cam home later that day and found a card in the door saying the tax assessor "was there to assess the house for the full market value".

The rumor is that evidently though sales volumes are down, the median price is way up and with low reserves (and a special session called) they seem to be trying to reassess folks.

"DGO, is your new house worth more than the other house was? If you are in a nicer neighborhood where all the houses around you are basically the same price, your tax assessments are usually more bc the houses are worth more."

Yes, new house is worth probably $55K more than old one. But new one is actually the lowest priced house in our neighborhood, some being worth up to $400K. Ours we just bought for $202K. Pretty good deal, yes, because it does need some upgrades done, especially in the kitchen and baths. Probably turned quite a few buyers off. But we won't be doing these for the next few years. Just cosmetically.

Tax bills will be coming in any day now, so I'm sure it will be interesting.

disneyrsh: So I look online and I find out that the neighbors that had the low tax assessments last year that I used for a comp have now gone WAY up. And I'm like, oh, crap, I think I threw my neighbors under the bus. And my house under the info for our purchase is now listed as "questionable sale".

What!?

So it now looks like Big Brother thinks something fishy was going on with the sale of our house, great.

They are probably just questioning whether or not it was an arm's length sale. If it was a relative or friend selling to you, you may have paid less than market value (or fair market value) skewing your sale price and therefore your tax assessment.

Yeah, I wish it had been a friendly sale; it was a pitched battle between us and the seller. We knew (thanks to my industrious digging) that it was a rental property that was in the last year of him being able to claim it as a deduction on his taxes and we knew he wanted to dump it. We also knew that we were looking at about 50-75k (minimum) to bring it up to the level of the other homes in the neighborhood, and fought hard to get the price where it was.

It included several hugely lowball offers on our part and walking away for a few months and then coming back. He has 14 other properties that I'm aware of, and I knew how much he'd paid for it, so I just had to hang in there. I still think I could have gotten him lower, but my husband was tired of battling.

The house needs a new roof, new dual hvac, new paint, new kitchen, new MB, a 2 car garage (original was converted to great room), new water heater, possible new leech field for the septic (we're being VERY careful), and new windows (single panes are falling out of current ones).

Would I buy this house again? I dunno, structurally it's a tank, but cosmetically it's such a dog that I wonder if I'll ever get it looking decent.

Yeah, house values from the tax man increased an average of 100k in my neighborhood in 1 year. The people across the street from us did some huge improvements and their tax assessed value went from 283k to 412k in one year. Ow.

I just wanted to update everyone, since you all had such helpful advice. We ended up letting the guy come over, which I think was a good move, at least where we live.

The sunroom was new to the tax books, as it was previously listed as a 3 season porch. But we still only got assessed at our purchase price, which is just a slight increase over last year's assessment.

Thanks again!

The attitude here really confuses me. Someone shows up from the government and wants to "inspect" my house to make sure they've got the assesment right. Sure, just so long as they bring a copy of the warrent.

Perhaps we should also have annual safety inspections where the fire and county health department come by and make sure your somke detectors work and that your kitchen is clean and plumbing is in good working order.

I wonder how many people who would readily let the tax assessor in have a problem with some of the NSA's phone tapping...

bentruler: "I wonder how many people who would readily let the tax assessor in have a problem with some of the NSA's phone tapping..."

Well...in our town, you either let them in...or have them assume...and then if they assume incorrectly that an improvement exists that does not exist, you can either pay the increase in assessment...or...drum roll please...let them in to prove it wrong.

That said, it appears as if privacy has become only an illusion....as anytime one surfs the web...makes a call...watchs the tube via cable, satellite, etc, there is always the chance that it won't stay private...

Google earth may even catch you leaving your home, entering a store, movie theater, restaurant etc., and...lets not forget about the plethora of public surveillance camera's everywhere these days...

I'm not saying I agree...I'm just stating what appears to be obvious.

In 35 years of home ownership I've never had a visit or an inquiry from the tax assessor. I live in a large city (Seattle area) and don't know if that makes a difference. In any case, if I ever had a visit from an assessor or someone claiming to be an assessor, I'd tell them politely that, as a matter of privacy, I'm not letting them in. I also question the concept that, if you don't let them in, they make it more expensive for you. That seems to be very shaky from an enforcement basis. Maybe they like to foster that belief to cow people into letting them in, but I'd be much happier keeping them out and then appealing if I had a concern. I respect the law and regulations -- I enforced environmental regulations for 25 years -- but I also believe in privacy and have no intention of inviting some stranger to trespass inside my house. Some of the tactics of assessors reported in posts above seem highly questionable, manipulative, and/or intrusive, and I don't think we should be enablers for them.

kudzu9, I agree...however, we live in NJ...the land where anything goes. It is very difficult to appeal an assessment as wellÂ..one has to hire an appraiser and appeal to the county. More often than not...the appeal is denied.

However, when I appealed in NYC during the last RE meltdown, all I had to do was provide a record of the comp sales in the area over the previous year...and the assessment was adjusted accordingly.

NJ is a state unto itselfÂ.and it always boils down to how they can get more $$$$....

I'm in Jersey and my appeal was done online and no appraisal was required. As I understand it, some NJ towns require an appraisal but in others, an appraisal is required only on commercial property.

Why are you bringing up a thread that is now 8 years old?

There's a lot of that going on!

In our 5 county MLS area I have never heard of the Assessor wanting to look inside anyone's home. They do check the outside for improvements every few years or measure to verify permitted size when new construction.

Well I am a data collector, truth is it’s generally based on trust. You do not have to call them and they have ZERO authority to even step on your property. I’m doing this to get through college and I hate it lol. The reality is if we can’t see it we assume nothing has changed. that being said we are instructed to estimate building if there are visible no trespassing signs exist. However any over estimates can be Challenged infront of the county commissioN. Because most people lay down and take it they often side with the homeowner.

The thread is 13 years old. You were about 5 years old when they discussed this.

Mrs. S, why does it matter? The information is still relevant to someone looking. What has changed in the 12 years, is, in some areas, the building inspector comes in to the house before title passes to make sure everything is up to code. I have heard in some towns, the information is shared with the assessor and suddenly taxes go up.

Yes, Linda, I like some of the old threads being brought back up. I like the fact the assessor has no authority to view your home. I doubt they let homeowners know that. Thanks Cody and good luck with your future...

Mrs. S, why does it matter? The information is still relevant to someone looking.

There is a reason that it is bad form to necro threads. The original participants are usually long gone and thus can't post follow ups, clarifications or in some cases defenses of their original positions.

Internet etiquette (if there is such a thing) is to start a new thread and if need be reference the old thread in it. I am not taking a side in this, just stating the common case against bringing back old threads.

I like the fact the assessor has no authority to view your home. I doubt they let homeowners know that. Thanks Cody and good luck with your future...

Different states have different rules on what a tax assessor can do. There are some states where refusing to allow an assessor access forfeits your right to appeal. In other states there are methods to compel you to comply at your own expense.

Furthermore, and I know this is going to be hard for some to swallow, things are not always so black and white. For example, building codes are essentially what ever the inspector says they are. In many states there is no recourse against a building inspector who is wrong, and every plumber or electrician who has been around for a while has had to undo something that is clearly allowed by the code, when the inspector says no. Tax assessors get pretty close to that, in large part, they can do whatever the tax assessment district you are in lets them do.

So I understand. I live close to Baylor and would go to Christmas
parties by some dean of something. Lots of professors. My wife got so
mad at me. Seems all those Professors wives were hanging around me. It
was nice, but I was seeing the daggers my wife was throwing at me. I
even got some follow up phone calls.

Huh?

This entire thread does not have the right to live.

I agree. My convuluted comment should put an end to, but I doubt it.

I let my tax assessor in. Nothing much changed. Everything in there that needed to be permitted since the previous owner was there, had been permitted. She was fine with my home and as I noted, nothing much changed.