Anybody here ever fight property taxes before? by 6IXSTRINGJACK

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Anybody here ever fight property taxes before?

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Monday, March 17, 2014 14:07
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 1826
PAGE 1 of 1

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 9:09 AM

I'm looking for some advice, but I think it would be interesting to talk to anyone who's ever done it whether they've been successful or not.

When I first moved here, I was happy with the property taxes paid the previous year on the home at roughly $2,400, considering if I owned the same house 10 miles west in Crook County I'd be paying over $6,000 for the same house.

I didn't know I bought a home on a flood plane though.... I did a ton of research when looking for homes, but the local taxing authority was charging more then they should for this land because they listed it as not on a flood plane. I didn't find that out until about 4 months after I moved in when a neighbor brought it up. The first dry year went smoothly, but 2 sump-pumps and floods later, I'm getting a little more than annoyed. Who in their right mind would have built a tri-level home in the dead center of a flood plane? I can understand an unfinished basement, kind-of, but a tri-level that's wide open from floor to floor so the basement NEEDS to be finished or the whole house looks like crap?

The freakin' bank knew this was a flood plane. If I had a mortgage, I wouldn't have bought the house because I'd have to pay $1.2k a year for flood insurance.

Anyways....

I've spent MANY hours the last two years successfully fighting the property taxes. My first year here, I managed to only pay $1.1k, and last year I paid $1,350. Many items on the list of changes made to devalue the property didn't even have anything to do with the flooding issues.

YEAR ONE (Prior to fighting): The house was valued at 159k, which was about 80 more than I paid for it.

YEAR ONE (After fighting): The house was valued at 91k. Still more than I would be able to sell it for in the real world, but it shaved my taxes over $1,300 bucks.

YEAR TWO (Fighting again): There was a state-wide re-assessment, and I was told that it happens once every 10 or so years and it "reset" a lot of the things I had accomplished the year before. Before fighting it, THEY said that it was worth 131k.

After fighting it, the house was valued at 99k. After proving I was on a flood plane with both a letter from my Town and a fax from FEMA about a $13k payment in 2006, I got 10% of the land value. Even with this, and some other severe devaluing to the house, I still had to pay more than that first year. I was told that it was because there were TWO separate "circumstances" applied to my dwelling that can't both be taken.

YEAR THREE (In progress): WTF? It's back up to 148k now!??? How does that even make sense? Not only did all the work I did get erased for the second time, but that's 17k more than their own GD re-assessment last year.

I'm going to fight it again, for damned sure, and I know all the right people to talk to and have all of the records that got it reduced the last few years, so I'm not worried that my taxes are going to just "jump" 700 bucks or so. But I'm getting REALLY tired of having to do this year after year after year.....

I even know WHERE the problem lies, but I don't know how to fix it, and neither do any of the 25 government employes I talked to. The problem is that between the Treasurer and the Assessor, there are no less than 3 separate databases on properties. I can't even tell you how hard it was to get them to all change me to "Street" instead of the mislabeled "Avenue". on one of them.

For the most part it's awesome living in Indiana. The average Joe has a fighting chance when doing this stuff without a lawyer because it's all "real" money figures and not so purposefully convoluted like in Crook County, IL that even Warren Buffet would have a hard time figuring it all out.

I'm just wondering if I should "lawyer up" this year....

I don't think that it's going to take too much effort to get it back down to 98k assessed value with the research I have and the contacts I've made, but at this point it's starting to feel like harassment. Maybe I can do all the dirty work on my own, and then when I get the re-assessment and have 3 years of history at nearly half the price they try to charge me every year, I can get the lawyer to put the screws to them and I won't have to dread the new year and the new tax bill.....

This isn't an argument about the "fairness" of paying property taxes. We all have to do it. When most people buy a home, even one they can't afford, it does give them a "home base" and a certain amount of security. After having to do two sump-pump swaps in freezing cold standing water that was rising rapidly, I feel like I got a goddamned ball and chain attached to me. I can't be away from my home for more than a day without feeling really nervous.

I just think that the taxes I'm paying, considering I'm in a flood plane, should reflect that.

Obviously, after presenting my case, year after year, they agree with me too...

How do I make it "stick" this time?

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 1:38 PM

BYTEMITE

Jesus Christ your house is both a water sink and a money sink.

It's to the point where owning the house is clearly no longer a net positive in terms of your worth.

You paid 79 thousand and it's being estimated as almost twice that much. Flip that shit and screw the banks. Turn the tax disadvantage into an advantage.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

The post you're looking for is not here

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 22, 2014 2:35 AM

SHINYGOODGUY

I've never personally done it, but I have heard of people fighting their own property taxes. I'm not sure if you can permanently fix the amount of your property taxes (I tried looking it up, but no luck).

Here's some info that may help:

http://www.kiplinger.com/article/real-estate/T010-C000-S002-how-to-app
eal-your-property-tax-bill.html

Before you say you know what to do, take a look at the article, it has some good pointers. One thing that the article says is to be wary of lawyers in regards to this. Hire, instead, a professional appraiser ($250-500) and perhaps they could find a way. But first check with your county/community to see if they allow it. Or buy the National Taxpayer's Union's guide "How to fight property taxes ($9.95), if you haven't already.

Somehow it seems strange that your property taxes would go up since it's inside a flood plane. But you need to find out what is the county's criteria in making the assessment. How do they come to that determination?
At least your ahead of the ballgame, most people don't know that they can fight their property taxes.

I'll keep looking in the meantime.

SGG

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 22, 2014 3:03 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Unfortunately everything I know is for Los Angeles County. I got nothing.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 23, 2014 8:06 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
I've never personally done it, but I have heard of people fighting their own property taxes. I'm not sure if you can permanently fix the amount of your property taxes (I tried looking it up, but no luck).

Here's some info that may help:

http://www.kiplinger.com/article/real-estate/T010-C000-S002-how-to-app
eal-your-property-tax-bill.html

Before you say you know what to do, take a look at the article, it has some good pointers. One thing that the article says is to be wary of lawyers in regards to this. Hire, instead, a professional appraiser ($250-500) and perhaps they could find a way. But first check with your county/community to see if they allow it. Or buy the National Taxpayer's Union's guide "How to fight property taxes ($9.95), if you haven't already.

Somehow it seems strange that your property taxes would go up since it's inside a flood plane. But you need to find out what is the county's criteria in making the assessment. How do they come to that determination?
At least your ahead of the ballgame, most people don't know that they can fight their property taxes.

I'll keep looking in the meantime.

SGG

Thanks SGG...

The only reason my property taxes went up this year is because somebody's system is not being updated.

I just found out my property is valued this year at 94k, which is lower than last year. In the end, this should set the price, but who really knows??

Bottom line, what I've learned today is that while one entity belives I owe over 2k in property taxes this year, the other (more important) one believes I only owe about 1.3k....

Just got to make that "stick" so I don't have to go through this every year now.... :)

BTW.... those are VERY GOOD tips in the artice you sent. If you haven't covered every single one of those bases and perhaps a few more you came up with on your own, your "taxing body" would just laugh you out of the office.

Where I live they are fair. I'm quite certain that they deny 100 claims for every one they remediate. Come to them with solid proof you shouldn't be paying what you are, even if it's something small, and they will be more than fair about it.

I'm not really going to have to "fight" anything this year. I'm just going to have to bring up issues AGAIN that I've spent the last two years bringing up, to people who remember me by name. It's just getting stupid now.....

My biggest concern is having to pay 1.2k up front for taxes in May and have a zero balance or even have money owed back to me again in November. I'm a financial rock, so I always make it work without any penalty to me, but expecting a guy making minimum wage, part time, to be able to pay nearly his entire yearly property tax burden in May, 3 years in a row, is a horrible thing to ask of somebody.....

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 24, 2014 5:08 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Remember what I said about how the cruelest thing you can do to anyone, ever, is give them their hearts desire ?

Thought I was kidding, didja ?

Not Shadenfruede, well, not much, more that you really need to start re-evaluating your life and what you REALLY want out of it.

-F

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, January 25, 2014 12:16 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

Remember what I said about how the cruelest thing you can do to anyone, ever, is give them their hearts desire ?

Thought I was kidding, didja ?

Not Shadenfruede, well, not much, more that you really need to start re-evaluating your life and what you REALLY want out of it.

-F

First off, "Shadenfruede" is an awesome word and is pronounced no less than 10 times as awesomely as it's spelled.

There's the problem, Frem.

I want nothing out of life.

I want life to leave me alone.

I got the message loud and clear when I read Job.

Idle hands.....

These were the best of times, these were the worst of times....

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, January 25, 2014 12:42 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
I want nothing out of life.

I want life to leave me alone.

Which is why I suggested getting out of the hell house.

Look I get it, I do, it's your "castle." My brother was educated at various top universities, and he was still dumb enough to buy a hundred year old house after an inspector did a shitty job.

So he's now sitting on a house where the furnaces don't work in the winter and it's 10 fuckin' degrees outside, the roof was leaking and damaged a bunch of walls and there's mold and they had to replace the roof, the plumbing and sewer pipes burst the first winter and flooded the whole basement, the swamp cooler on the roof needs constant babying in the summer, and I'm sure yet more wonderful problems are there to be discovered. He's put 80,000 back into the house.

And after all that investment, what do you think he's doing? Staying because it's his home? Staying because he's put all that investment in? Staying because of pride?

No. He's looking for other houses, because at some point enough is enough, because if your house gets you deathly sick because you're always fighting the basement flooding in the winter and it's hemorrhaging money to taxes or repairs, there are houses that won't do that.

This isn't an admirable case of you "fighting the man" over your property, this is you wasting your energy and money and potentially damaging your health for no good reason when you could be doing something else.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:06 PM

FREMDFIRMA

And you think YOU got boned...

Property Tax Soars After Appraiser Adds Mythical Luxury Bathroom & 660 Sq. Ft.
http://consumerist.com/2014/01/27/property-tax-soars-after-appraiser-a
dds-mythical-luxury-bathroom-660-sq-ft/

Quote:
A family in New Jersey says they have no choice but to sell their home after years of paying sky-high property taxes that resulted from the fertile imagination of a town appraiser who inexplicably added on hundreds of square feet and a luxury bathroom (complete with two sinks, just like on HGTV!), and that there’s little chance they’ll ever get any of that money back.

FACT: Most city/town/local "appraisers" are crooked as the day is long, and will radically inflate the values in order to screw you.

Worth the dosh to hire your OWN, independent appraiser and contest their bullshit assertions, just make sure to hire said appraiser from OUTSIDE the jurisdiction of said city/town to ensure they're not complicit and make it harder for the city/town cabal to "lean on" them via legalistic/licensing/permit threats, yes ?

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 12:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Hey Byte.

I get what you're saying, I really do. And being a guy who's experienced some crazy shit that most people would never even have to think about, my DEEPEST sympathies go out to your bro. If it's time for him to go then more power to him. I have a lot of respect for that decision, because I know it couldn't be an easy one to make. Nobody wants to walk away from a mistake, especially when the only "upside" is that they won't waste any more time or money on it.

That being said, based on your thoughts, I think I may have SERIOUSLY overstated the severity of the problems I've faced while being here though...

Even at the FULL $2.5k taxes I expected to pay when I moved in, that's a bargain compared to the $6k I'd be paying if I lived 15 miles West. Indiana is slowly following suit with Illinois in a few areas that I'm not too happy about, but in general taxes still aren't one of them. For instance, in Crook County, you pay the full 10.25% sales tax on ALL food, even unprepared foods. Indiana isn't as cool as Wisconsin with ZERO tax on food, but they only tax something like 1.5%, so long as the food isn't "hot" when you buy it.

The problems I've been having, in the end, are really my fault. I have the knowledge, ability, and a network of friends and family who can help me learn in areas I'm not familiar with. Unfortunately, I ran out of money doing the cosmetic work I knew I had to do when I bought it, and it's hard trying to squirrel away the money you need to pay cash for things like gutters and a new furnace and central air and a Generac when you're making $6.90 an hour after income taxes, part-time. If I can find a way to make about 10k more than I made last year over the course of the next two years, this house should not only be pretty self-sufficient, but it should be pretty damn comfortable and, dare I say, even energy efficient as well?

On the flip side, the only reason this isn't The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks, is because when shit REALLY goes bad here, I take complete stock of the situation, I shed myself completely of my "whiny bitch" persona you know me by in the RWED, I figure out what I need to do to survive, and then I just do what needs to be done. If I could only be 1/4 of that Man in my day-to-day life, I'd be the Goddammned President of some 3rd World country now.

Sure, I've had to drop nearly $400 dollars on two sump pumps in one year, but it would have easily cost me upwards of $1,200-$1,500 to get it fixed that first time when they knew I was facing an emergency situation and they'd have to be the ones crawling around in 2 feet nearly freezing cold water.

In the end, if I wasn't so freaking paranoid of debt of ANY kind, I can't see a better reason to take out a loan for about 10-12k and just get this all taken care of now. I just can't bring myself to do it though when I'm not making much. I just imagine all of that interest I'd be paying on the interest over the next 5 years or so because I can't just pay it all off tomorrow. $400 for a few sump pumps ain't shit compared to the interest I'd be paying for immediate peace of mind.....

Trust me... My bitching here is NOT about the house killing me. That's a choice I've made on my own because I refuse to take out that loan. If you know anything about me from here, I do my best to live stress free with everything I can control because maintaining my coping mechanisms is really all the stress I care to deal with.

At the end of the day, living in my home, I'm making out like a bandit here simply by the things I don't have to pay. I'm not talking about a mortgage (although that's nice too), but I'm talking about how cheap it is to live in my own very private space without any landlord to answer to, and I can fairly safely say that ZERO dollars get wasted going to somebody else. There's no rent, so I'm not paying somebody money to live here, and because there's no rent, there's nobody taking my money and giving ANOTHER 20% of it to Uncle Sam (after he just took 10% from me after I made it).

Here's how I justify this to myself, my own worst critic...

Rent for a nice 2 bedroom/2 bathroom apartment in an area as "nice" as mine would be about $1.1k a month. But... if you rent, you don't have to pay for things like homeowner insurance and heat and water and trash pickup and property taxes and lawn upkeep and SUMP PUMPS grrrrrrrr....

Obviously, the only way I'm staying barely in the black with my current employment status is because I don't have a rent or mortgage. Even if I quit drinking bargain beers and smoking barely taxed roll-your-own tobacco and never indulged again, that $2.4k/yr saved would only net me a little more than 2 months apartment rent in my old "hood".

I figure that my monthly "dwelling" expenditures are no more than $350, if you look at all of the regularly occurring things that I have to pay for today that were included in my rent when I was renting. And, that ain't half bad....

Now, when things break, I'm on the hook for them, so that number is a little skewed, even if $350 was actually a little on the high-side in the first place. For instance, my two sump pumps at $400 would have raised that figure to $383.33 a month last year. The first week I lived here, I had to replace a water heater for $250 and I lucked into an AWESOME washer/dryer combo on Craigslist for $320. So that first year I was still under $400/mo. "rent" with that extra $47.50/mo. divvied up accordinly.

Two major side-bars to this........

The first, is that the roof has no leaks, it is no more than 5 years old and looks to be "very high" quality. At least, in the entire 6 months I built garages we never used any shingles that looked half as durable. The second, is that after suffering a few seasons of very heavy rain and snow with a completely exposed basement, I can say with 100% confidence that the foundation of the house has ZERO leakage after 55 years post construction.

No.... When I weigh it all out, it's seriously an no-brainier. I would truly be an asshole if I told you that this, as a whole, was a bad experience.

When I'm not drinking and ranting, I'm usually a very reasonable person, even with myself. That person would really need to do A LOT of soul searching if they believed that their situation were unbearable.

I learned more between the ages of 19 and 22 than I did the first 18 years of my life. And now, in many ways because of owning this unique home, I've learned far more in the last 2 1/2 years than I ever learned in the first 32 of them. There's no contest. That's a fact, Jack ;)

I save around $700 every single month that passes by simply by having this house and not renting a decent apartment in a decent neighborhood locally is just icing on the cake. That's $20,300 post-income-tax dollars I didn't pay since I've been here.

That also happens to be about $5,000 more post-income-tax dollars I've actually made from real jobs since I've been here.

Haha! Wow! That sounds really funny when I put it that way! I actually make more money every year simply by owning this house and not renting than I do working 24-32 hours a week at a real job.....

No..... life here is actually pretty damn copacetic 320 or more of the days per year. If I were renting now with the same job in the same area, as cheap as I am, you know I'd be living in some shitty $400/mo studio apartment in a neighborhood I'd never invite my mom to. I'd hate my landlord and the rules. I'd hate my inconsiderate neighbors and the way their sound system would give me a back massage while lying on my bed at all hours of the day and night.

Further plusses.....?

I fixed that damn snowblower. Now I WANT it to snow. That moffathucker is FUUUUUUN!

We just suffered a night 5 degrees colder than when my pipes froze 2-3 weeks ago and now I have been able to mark the first "two" in a triangulation of the sweet spot between outside temperature and what's going on in my house. I think I went a little overboard and spent more money than I need to to keep it warm this time, but nothing froze up. Not that I hope to see those temperatures again in my life, but one more time and I'll pretty much know within a dollar exactly how much heat this house needs to keep that from happening again.

Oh, and the property taxes might not actually be an issue this year. My township "guy" tells me that whatever figures I was looking at online are wrong. Not only does he not see the 148k assessed value, but the value he sees is actually 4k less than we got it down to last year.

For now, I'm leaving it at that and I'm going to take a leap of faith and just believe him that things are the way he assures me that they are. If he's wrong, I'll fight it successfully, for the third time now, and then I'll talk to my lawyer Uncle about it and see what he recommends to make it stick next year.

Thanks Byte :)

If anything, your assessment of my home, based only off of things I've said about it here, is so much lower than I'd hope any of my friends or family would think about it when they see it.

I only now realize that that disparity probably is a regular thing with me in pretty much all aspects of anything.....

I must sound like a real asshole sometimes, huh?

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Quote:
I want nothing out of life.

I want life to leave me alone.

Which is why I suggested getting out of the hell house.

Look I get it, I do, it's your "castle." My brother was educated at various top universities, and he was still dumb enough to buy a hundred year old house after an inspector did a shitty job.

So he's now sitting on a house where the furnaces don't work in the winter and it's 10 fuckin' degrees outside, the roof was leaking and damaged a bunch of walls and there's mold and they had to replace the roof, the plumbing and sewer pipes burst the first winter and flooded the whole basement, the swamp cooler on the roof needs constant babying in the summer, and I'm sure yet more wonderful problems are there to be discovered. He's put 80,000 back into the house.

And after all that investment, what do you think he's doing? Staying because it's his home? Staying because he's put all that investment in? Staying because of pride?

No. He's looking for other houses, because at some point enough is enough, because if your house gets you deathly sick because you're always fighting the basement flooding in the winter and it's hemorrhaging money to taxes or repairs, there are houses that won't do that.

This isn't an admirable case of you "fighting the man" over your property, this is you wasting your energy and money and potentially damaging your health for no good reason when you could be doing something else.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 12:27 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

And you think YOU got boned...

http://consumerist.com/2014/01/27/property-tax-soars-after-appraiser-a
dds-mythical-luxury-bathroom-660-sq-ft/

Freaking horror story there Frem!

At the same time, I know that you wouldn't have wasted a single second fighting that and winning it.

SERIOUSLY.....!!!!?????????

TWO WHOLE DECADES OF BEING FINANCIALLY RAPED BY THE TOWNSHIP BECAUSE "The town outgrew us financially, we thought, but we didn’t want to uproot our kids"

I'm sorry Frem, but the way I look at this case was stated very eloquently by the taxing-body against the "idiots".....

Quote:
The town’s argument was that the homeowners should have known there was a problem back in 2010 and should have applied for a rebate back then.

Goddamned right dude. Your property taxes increase from $11k a year to over $28k a year, and I have to hear about you bitching about paying it for over two decades without ever trying to fight it?

Honestly Frem, phuck that idiot. He is the poster child for Barnum's "sucker born every minute".

At the end, he paid more in property taxes on that house in one single year (post-income-tax) than I've made in the last 2 1/2 years before taxes.

If I had access to $28k for even one year of a real college, we may have never even met.

The only time I feel bad for the guy is this quote:

Quote:
The homeowner says he’s thinking about going to court to get that money back, but knows there is no guarantee of success and may end up costing the family money it doesn’t have

You're right man. I don't care how important you think you are in your day-to-day job, but the fact that this story hit the news at all means that you're bitching about it and that money actually IS an issue for you at some point, which means that you're not really all that important.

That being said, you think you can afford to hire the team of lawyers who will not only get you your money back but can also beat the government lawyers and make a government Judge see things your way and give you a nice big bag full of money and make the taxpayers pay for all the court costs and your legal team?

Dream on asshole.

If that money meant anything to you at all, you should have done something to protect it the second you paid income taxes on it. You have ZERO claim to it now.

Chalk it up to a lesson learned, and don't do it again.

Only unarguably moronic individuals make the same financial mistakes over and over and over again when it doesn't involve ANYTHING pleasurable on the back end like high-priced hookers or designer drugs.

Did you get a RUSH off that tax on your stupidity?

Didn't think so.....

And yes.... I still think I'm getting boned if things aren't "right" as I've been assured they are. I'll find out around the 1st of April if things are copacetic.

One of the awesome things about living here is that you CAN actually fight things without a lawyer. Appraisal values are Constitutionally based on REAL WORLD figures, and not the convoluted mess that Crook County does.

When they say my house is 148k or 98k, it means EXACTLY that, and there is a further breakdown for land and home, and for the home it goes into specifics.

In Crook County, my land and home would be appraised for no more than 15k.

15k!!!!? you ask?

Yes....

Maybe it's just Crook County's way of saying that I should have learned College Algebra. After they apply a "multiplier" to your dwelling based off of further convoluted concepts that none of the low-level employees you could ever reach could ever understand.... somehow that $15k appraisal would equal over $6k in property taxes.

Nope.....

Not here....

I won't go so far as to say that everything is "plain as day", but it CAN be sorted out if you do your due dilligance.

I don't need a lawyer to get my taxes in line. I've done it two years in a row, and likely won't have any problems doing it a third year after all the contacts I've made and the proof I've provided.

It just pisses me off that I might have to get a lawyer to finally find a way to FORCE these lazy government officials to make all of the taxing bodies recognize the new status of this home.

As I said before, my new appriasal this year is supposed to be 4k less than what it was last year (from somebody who works for the township that actually controls the taxes levied). It's the County website that shows an increase of 52k beyond that.

I just want to find a way to get everyone on the same page.

It will REALLY piss me off if I have to pay a lawyer to do that after I've done all the work.... ;)

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 4:40 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Depends on the size of the city/township - in a smaller one usually it's only a matter of finding the right ass and putting a boot in it, not usually literally, but that's been known to happen too.

All else fails, you find someone better off, or a local business that's also been handed a bullshit assessment, and ride in on their coat-tails, kind of like a proxy-ninjacat attack.

-F

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 5:54 PM

SHINYGOODGUY

Good point Frem. Hire someone reputable, it's worth it (as Yoda would say, save you thousands it will).

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

And you think YOU got boned...

Property Tax Soars After Appraiser Adds Mythical Luxury Bathroom & 660 Sq. Ft.
http://consumerist.com/2014/01/27/property-tax-soars-after-appraiser-a
dds-mythical-luxury-bathroom-660-sq-ft/
Quote:
A family in New Jersey says they have no choice but to sell their home after years of paying sky-high property taxes that resulted from the fertile imagination of a town appraiser who inexplicably added on hundreds of square feet and a luxury bathroom (complete with two sinks, just like on HGTV!), and that there’s little chance they’ll ever get any of that money back.

FACT: Most city/town/local "appraisers" are crooked as the day is long, and will radically inflate the values in order to screw you.

Worth the dosh to hire your OWN, independent appraiser and contest their bullshit assertions, just make sure to hire said appraiser from OUTSIDE the jurisdiction of said city/town to ensure they're not complicit and make it harder for the city/town cabal to "lean on" them via legalistic/licensing/permit threats, yes ?

-Frem

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, March 17, 2014 2:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Justice can be served if you persevere.....

Not only are my taxes reasonable this year, but because of current local legislation "we're" not on the hook for 99% of the relief dollars to the township.

Every single change we made to my property last year has been basically etched in stone.

Because of the relief of a very unfair burden to my town that has been paid to a local town for decades, my taxes even went down an extra $200 from last year without lifting a finger.

Your "share" of property taxes is just a percentage of an entire amount that WILL be collected by the end of the year.

Chances are at least 50/50 that, for whatever reason, you're paying more than your share.

It just so turns out that my particular share, as agreed upon by government officials in legal documents now, is less than half of what the previous owners paid when they lived here.

I hate to brag, but I can be pretty damn awesome when I need to be.

I was going to post "Free Falling" here, but I decided to post one of the few "pop" Petty songs I didn't know the words of really.

Just listing while wrapping this post up, I can't say I made the wrong choice there.

;)

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

YOUR OPTIONS

SHARE THREAD

NEW POSTS TODAY

USER	POST DATE

USER

POST DATE