Property tax/assessor question

Cripes, how do you guys want property taxes to be figured? How should public stuff be paid for?
 
I put up a building and was not looking forward to the tax increase and expected a visitation for measurements. On-site visit never happened but my tax went up anyway. I was curious and called down to the treasurer, she said they go off the sales tax which is reported to the county. It was outside city limits so a building permit was not required.
There is a program purchased by some Counties called Changefinder. You can live in the woods if you add on the assessor can measure with the aerial view and tax the addition. Same way with grain bins and ag buildings. It compares photos from previous years. It can measure the height and diameter of buildings and bins.

https://www.eagleview.com/government/real-value-change-detection

A side note straight agricultural buildings are assessed at I think around 25% of the value compared to 100% residential/acreage. Then both are taxed at around 58% of the assessed value. Its an Ag state.
Non Ag Commercial buildings are assessed at 100% and taxed at about 90% of that.
 
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I put a $100,000 addition on several years ago and my property taxes now are $100 cheaper than when the addition went up.
 
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It's not the property taxes most people have issues with, it's the games and BS that's pulled to get the preconceived end result. Assessment values have nearly zero correlation to the actual market value.
This is 100% wrong. I guess we might just have to agree to disagree. Yeah, the market may change much faster than the tax value, but what choice is there?
 
This is 100% wrong. I guess we might just have to agree to disagree. Yeah, the market may change much faster than the tax value, but what choice is there?
My assessed value is 50% of what i paid for my home 15 years ago.
 
Well if I were you I would protest the value in like May or whenever. Have you tried that already? Maybe you paid too much for your house.
Look for huge assessment increases in September 23 and March 24 statements. Just watch what you pay. That is your local governments asking in their budget increases. Counties, schools, cities, townships, EMS, hospital, Assessor, Ag extension and Community Colleges. A proactive Assessor is very important in keeping out high and low assessments.
 
I have a friend that used to own a used car lot in Iowa City, on the corner of a good intersection. Real good location.

The city decided a used car lot was not highbrow enough, they wanted that area to be more upscale. So they raised their assessment and his taxes by 3x. Essentially made it impossible to cover that and make any money. The assessment was something like 5x higher than comparables next to and across from him. He appealed it, brought a bunch of appraisals from realtors, etc - did his homework. Got denied anyway, basically they said they thought their appraisal was more better. But thanks anyway.

He could have taken it to court, maybe, but that would have cost a fortune and probably taken years. He closed the business and sold the location for what it was actually worth, not the city assessed value.

Short story- the government can take from you anything you have, if they want to.

I listened in on a hearing online once a few years back when Grimes was trying to acquire some land south of town to re-do an intersection that badly needed to add some turn lanes and go to a 4 lane stretch due to the ammount of growth and traffic in that area. Problem was the people that owned the farm land did not find that value they city wanted to assess it at in order to acquire it fair value. The city had to hire some lawyers as the land owners were willing to go to court over it and the representation for the city basically told the council to pay what they were asking as by the time they drug it out in court they'd have delayed the project and likely racked up enough legal fees it could wind up costing them more than just paying it now to get the project going. Then the next issue was the people with the farm land were contesting how the property assessments would affect them because pretty much everyone but them are getting any benefit from the project so the nearby businesses and people in town should see the assessment increases needed to cover the cost not them as they only move machinery to and from the fields a few times a year and they've had to pay more than their fair share over the years since at one time it was just a gravel road and now it's turned into a 4 lane street with signals and turn lanes that have no benefit to them.

It is really interesting how stuff like this works when it comes to land grabs by local government or developers trying to price out the people who have been there a long time in order to force them to sell. I notice in the NW and West suburbs of the Des Moines Metro how you might find some old farm house and buildings still tucked away in an area now surrounded by new houses or buildings. The owners probably have been offered to sell it over the years and just held their ground as at one time there probably was never a neighbor close by and they never thought there would be a day where they were basically going to be part of the city limits. I know someone that originally built a home on a small acrage in the NW part of Grimes then the city wound up building a new sports complex practically in his backyard. Kept telling me he hated it and not what he thought would ever happen when he built the place. Well he and he wife wound up divorcing eventually and his ex-wife wound up selling it off after the divorce settlement so that kind of solved his issue I guess.
 
This is 100% wrong. I guess we might just have to agree to disagree. Yeah, the market may change much faster than the tax value, but what choice is there?
I worked in the mortgage industry, we didn't give a rip about assessed value; we cared about appraised value.