Homeowner's Property Value
- Thread starter cycloner29
- Start date
That's not that uncommon as I have often seen Building Inspectors looking for work being done with no permit. They get the additional permit money upfront and then raise the taxes every year thereafter.
The government has no accountability so in the end it really is just up to the board. Some will be reasonable and may just lower the assessment to make those that went through the trouble happy. There is a longer appeal process but almost no one uses it.
The government has no accountability so in the end it really is just up to the board. Some will be reasonable and may just lower the assessment to make those that went through the trouble happy. There is a longer appeal process but almost no one uses it.
My house was less than a year old and they decided to raise the value $30K. The land value on the assessment is twice of what i actually paid for the lot.
Makes a lot of sense.
They tried to get me on this one. I was having my kitchen updated (cabinets, counter top and floor) and an assessor showed up in my driveway unannounced asking questions and asking to go inside and look around. I nicely told him my updates did not require a permit and there is no chance he is coming inside.
That's good but what really gets me was the reassessment they did in our County a year or two ago. They clearly were biased against houses that did not let them in with many having huge jumps and in some cases like my house, they made up "facts". This is clearly against the USPAP principles that the people that wrote the report are supposed to go by but they collected the million dollars or so and not much changed other than values on average went up 4%.
My house was less than a year old and they decided to raise the value $30K. The land value on the assessment is twice of what i actually paid for the lot.
Makes a lot of sense.
This is a bit confusing as it says land value but they included site improvements like septic system, utilities, driveway, and other things in that land value. Plus it could be in strong markets that most of the increase is in the land as houses generally depreciate. It does get complicated.
In my neighborhood in Ankeny, I think they got the assessments about right. My assessment went up about 14%, so it had been under assessed for a while. The reason I'm saying this is that there have been 3 houses identical to mine that have recently sold for between 200k and 210k. The assessed value on all the houses is 184k. So while the assessed values have gone up, so have the actual price of the houses. I'm more mad at the appraiser who last fall only said my house was worth 179k. There's no way that property values in my area have gone up nearly 30k in the last 6 months.
Yes. From everyone I've talked to that have either refinanced or know about the process, I guess it's harder on the appraiser to do a refinance as there isn't an offer on the house. And the most recent sales of houses like mine at the time were about a year prior and they were about what I was appraised, but still a little higher.
We refinanced a few years ago and it was kind of like that. I thought she was pretty fair but then again, I also took into account that her number doesn't necessarily mean a sale number. You never know about appliances, HVAC, etc.
Never really saw any discussion in here on this particular question, but I've been able to determine that almost all of my obscene increase was due entirely to the increase in the land component of the assessment. Heard from a guy at work that Ames changed its formula so that land value is now a flat 25% of the total assessed property value. No way land value is up 65% from the 2015 assessment cycle (which is what mine skyrocketed by).
Like my little 1/3rd of an acre lot in north Ames is worth $97k!!
I mailed in an appeal since we refinanced late last year and had a recent market-based appraisal to reference. Haven't heard back yet.
I don't think it went well. The room had several people in it and I was at least 25 years younger than anyone else in the room. They asked if I brought comparisons and I told that didn't do any good because everyone's went up so there wasnt anyone to compare to. I also talked about how our homes assessed value only increased $18k over 12 years and now it increased by $21,000 in one assessment. They said we'll the house was sold in 2015 for $196k and assessment is close to sale price. I told them that if that were true the last two time our house was sold the assessed value never changed to come close to the sale price then. I got "It was a depressed market then".
What a joke. Bunch of old grumpy people barely listening to what I had to say as they sat and looked away from me at a screen most of the time. They were going to use whatever excuse they could to justify their actions. Need to find a way to remove some of these people. One old grump ask if I had an appraisal done, I said yes, it's required for the purchase of a home. How did he not seriously know that? I asked why this kind of increase couldn't have been done over several years to allow families to adjust to increased property taxes and I got a quick, "We can't do it that way!"
Just ridiculous.
What a joke. Bunch of old grumpy people barely listening to what I had to say as they sat and looked away from me at a screen most of the time. They were going to use whatever excuse they could to justify their actions. Need to find a way to remove some of these people. One old grump ask if I had an appraisal done, I said yes, it's required for the purchase of a home. How did he not seriously know that? I asked why this kind of increase couldn't have been done over several years to allow families to adjust to increased property taxes and I got a quick, "We can't do it that way!"
Just ridiculous.
That sucks, I am late to the party but what is the difference in overall taxes based on the new assessment?
They did the same thing in our county when we have very little demand for land, at least for housing development (because there isn't any). So I'm guessing this is more of a state mandate or bad assessment work. They are doing more of a cost analysis and included things that should be site improvements like utilities, driveways, landscaping, etc.
They obviously did not correctly measure the market. The one newer development in town started in the mid-90's. Thanks to the thread I found that 8 lots have been purchased in a dump to another investor. When they did the reassessment they double the land values from ~20k to 40k. In the meantime the Realtor who had developed the area put them all on the market and most finally sold for an average of $8,750 / per lot. Looks like the assessor has gone back and cut many of the values to below where they were two years ago. That was a well spent $1 million dollars mandated by the State.
I know its a shock but it sounds like the assessor just wasn't doing their job for the 12 years and kept the values with the actual market. It's one heck of a surprise to people when they play catch up all at once but they don't give a &@^#. It will be interesting around here as our big changes will have to be paid for the first time come September. I know I'm not looking forward as my taxes will probably double.
