property taxes

[cellio]

Our property-tax appeal is Thursday. We were assessed for about 15% over what we paid for the house in late 1999, and we've made no significant improvements (bookcases don't affect property values). I don't know if an appeal based on sales price will work, though. (The house had been on the market for several months, so I don't think we got a special deal. It was a fair price.)

Some of the information they give for our house is just plain wrong, and we'll get them to correct that. We do not have central air; in fact, the central-air people laughed at us and said it's not possible. They also think our house was built in 1920; we were told 1910 and we have a survey dated 1913 that shows our house. The main effect here might be to throw off the so-called comparable properties, all of which were built between 1920 and 1930 and most of which are strange in some way. Near as I can tell, the legitimate comparables approximately support our sale price but not our assessed value. But with everybody in the neighborhood (or so it seems) appealing, it's hard to know what the real numbers are going to turn out to be.

Well, all we can do is present our data and hope for sanity.

Comments

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Good luck! My appeal is on Friday. From what I read, data correction and comparable sales are everything. I think your sale price is still within the relevant time period so if nothing else, it is clearly a good comparable for your property!

[cellio]

Yes, we were listed as one of our own comparables. Two of our comparables are in fact approximately comparable, and they're both appealing -- so how can we compare ourselves to values that haven't been finalized? (And we're a comparable for one of them, so our appeal will have a similar effect.)

It actually looks like they assessed Squirrel Hill uniformly high compared to recent purchase prices. I also looked up all the houses on our side of our block (those being the ones on Beechwood that back onto Forbes, which certainly lowers value compared to other parts of the street). It turns out that ours is the smallest house on the block, both in terms of square footage and in terms of bells and whistles. The first three houses on the block are listed as 12 rooms, 6 bedrooms, 3000+ square feet (one is over 5000 square feet). Our "twin" is listed as about 150 square feet bigger than us, and that's the closest match by far. Of course, the accuracy of all of these measurements is highly questionable, though I believe from casual inspection that we and our twin are the smallest.

Well, we'll see what happens. Good luck with yours!

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

The comparables are supposed to be based on sales price alone and not assessed value so the fact that your neighbors are appealing too shouldn't matter. It does sound like there is something of a blip in your area though. I guess they are making up for last time when they assessed Squirrel Hill uniformly low. :) Good luck!