Darlees.com

Truly, the only way that you’ll ever know if your property assessment is calculated correctly & that you’re paying the right amount of property taxes is to give your local assessment office a call. Most people accept verbatim the assessed value that their local municipality has calculated for their property. Did you know that your property tax bill is based closely on this amount of assessed value? Are you at all familiar with what type of property assessment system exists in your city or town?

Generally, across North America, as well as in numerous places around the world, the concept being used market value based assessment. Property assessments are calculated on a mass appraisal basis & your local authorities analyze a specific time frame of actual market transactions that occurred in the marketplace. They delete sales that are invalid including family member transactions, special circumstance sales, foreclosures & numerous other types of invalid sales. For the most part, your municipality is quite competent in calculating a market value for your property that is fair. Having worked as an actual property tax assessor for over 20 years in one of North America’s largest municipalities, I have had a lot of experience in calculating values.

Do you know how to calculate a value for your property? If you did, would you know there’re easy steps on how to approach your local assessment office & dispute this value if you determined it to be in error? If you have opened your assessment notice recently, you may either agree or disagree with the value. If you disagree, there is the protocol that you must follow when it comes to filing a complaint. You must consult with your local assessment authorities & discuss or learn more about the procedure before you file a complaint. One of the biggest mistakes homeowners make when it comes to filing a complaint for their property assessment is to submit sales that are not within the analysis period used by their local assessment department. Another mistake that is made is that since most courts are addressing the fairness of an assessed value they’re prepared to review only this actual item. A lot of people actually appear at assessment hearings to dispute the tax rate, which is disputable only when you approach your local town council or bylaw authority, not an assessment hearing.

Another very common error that homeowners make in their defense, is in submitting comparable sales or properties that are not actually comparable to their home, or quite simply, they’re not comparing apples to apples. In other words, they may own a bungalow but they submit a sale from up the street of a two-story home. Generally, it is important that you first classify what type of structure you have & then find comparable sales with exactly the same type of structure in close proximity to your home. This will give a good foundation when filing a complaint on your property assessment. Obviously, the best indicator of value is a property that is almost identical in square  footage, the same structure type, two or three doors down from your home or located close by in the same block. Most municipalities use what they call a valuation date. Let me give you an example. Let us assume that your valuation date is July 1, 2006. The best indicator of value would be to find a home that meets the above criteria & sold in either June or July of 2006. Remember that property values change, sometimes dramatically over a month or two, & the closer you get to the valuation date, the more solid a case you’ll have. And so… So far so good. When was the last time you approached your assessment department to find out how they areclassifying your home’s structure type or what the square  footage is?

Terry A. Price is a regular contributing author to the expert author community & is committed to bringing quality useable content that you can take to the bank now. Terry is a retired Property Tax Assessor & has revealed some amazing inside secrets on how to pay less property tax. Please visit: http://www.propertytaxtip.com for many more information.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.