What seems to be happening is that counties across the country are getting creative with how they assess property. In your case, the county has recognized that your building has fallen in value (by $34,000) but that the land has mysteriously increased in value by the exact same amount.
Tah-dah! Your total value is the same, and you may now have the exact same property tax bill, or perhaps one that is higher if your county has raised the tax rates.
It’s ridiculous to think that your land value has gone up this year but the building has decreased in value, unless you live in one of a few blessed counties across the country. In most places, property values fell again. You should consider fighting the current valuation.
It’s hard to know how this might affect your ability to sell. No one likes to pay high property taxes, but we all enjoy the services those taxes pay for, such as good schools, firefighters, police, water, and garbage pickup. And, if your neighbors suffered the same fate you did, buyers looking at your neighborhood should see similar real estate taxes for similar homes.
I am in the process of a property tax appeal. What are some good Web sites I can use to see how much property values in my area have dropped?
There aren’t really any good Web sites that have up-to-date information you can rely on for a home value. There are a handful of sites that profess to offer a guess as to a home’s value (on Zillow.com, it’s called a “Zestimate”), but they can’t be relied upon for accuracy. (In some markets, they’re very accurate, but not so much in others.) BlockShopper.com lists sales prices of property in the area, but it isn’t national and doesn’t always include every sale. It doesn’t claim to know what your property is worth.
The best thing you can do is to contact a local real estate agent and ask for help in determining the recent sales prices of houses that are similar to yours. You can also glean this information by going to your local public recorder of deeds office and pulling up information for specific addresses.
Some counties offer better information than others. On some county Web sites, you can actually compile information on sales in a particular area over a specific period. You can then see whether some of the property values in your neighborhood have dropped significantly, and you can use the information to contest the valuation assigned to your residence by the local taxing authority.
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