Sorry this post is a bit late today, but I had to re-write it now that i'm not going to court after all. Court you ask?Well if you remember last year, I petitioned my property tax value on our little condo:
and I won!!!! They agreed to reduce my condo's value down to $115,000.00 instead of $120,903.00 so I saved around $60.00 on my property tax bill. When I got my property tax statement for 2012, I decided to petition them again.
I was planning on going to court on Tuesday to present my findings (based on property sales from 2011 values, up to March 30th of 2012 since you use the value the year before)... and instead I got a call from the assessors office. They said if I signed off on a value of $115,000 i wouldn't need to come into court... They would just process the change and issue me a refund.
Which works for me, especially since the lady told me the one "smoking gun" property I was going to use to state my case is outside the sell period i can use (its July 2012 and I need before March 2012-- I miss read the dates originally). Since the 2 bedroom units had such a degree of change (140k to 180k) she was fine signing off on $115K since that was the price the last one bedroom sold for.
The Details:
OLD:
Land: $77,093
Building/structures: $4628.00
Total taxable value: $123,321.00
NEW:
Land: $69,000
Buildings/Structures: $46,000
Total Taxable value: $115,000
I automatically get a $7,000 value discount for living in the property as a homeowner, so before the change, I'd owed $1,224.30 a year... and now I get to pay $1,137.53!
Which means I'll end up saving, $86.78 this year :) and now I get to just spend Tuesday at home playing catch up on blogs, crocheting some baby gifts, and getting some time with my pup-- instead of paying for parking and getting all nervous talking to a judge!!
It may seem silly to petition my property taxes over $86, but that's $86 I can send to my mortgage or put in savings... and if i'm being honest, I don't feel like I should pay more than I have to in property taxes if I'm willing to look into how the system works and follow all the rules and go through the process... which isn't that hard and the people at the office have been really friendly and informative.
Most people don't even look at the details and just cut a check, but that's never been me. Speaking of bills, I got another notice in the mail from the tax assessor... but this time it was about 2013. They dropped my 2013 value from $125,787 to $123,321... and that's without me doing a petition. I was planning on petitioning because of the $100,000 property that sold in the time period, but since i did refinance this year I wasn't sure if I was eligible to petition.
So I decided to call the assessors office and ask.
I told the guy that I had successfully won my case the past 2 years and was wondering if I should go through the process again for a lower value for the current billing cycle based on the value of my property on January 1, 2013. I told him I had refinanced in May of this year since the values had started going up after that date and he said he would have an assessor look into it and call me on Monday since I had already received a new lower rate notice and I was able to give them the properties I would bring with me to court over the phone. (it makes my research much easier when only 2 one bedroom units have sold in my complex since I bought my place 3.5 years or so ago.)
So who knows... maybe i'll save a bit for for this past cycle too and I won't have to fill out the petition!
I won't be able to petition for 2014 since the values went up and i used that to refinance with, but if they drop mine for 2013 and just average the 3 properties (mine bought at $120k, another at $115k and the last one at $100k that would knock my value down to $112k -- so who knows! Either way their new notice saves me $25!
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