BG, I don’t understand all of what you said yet but I think that the assessment to 800k was automatic because a similar type of reassessment occurred for most of the houses in my area. I think they were frankly overwhelmed with requests and just did some area wide reductions.

I am relying on the assessor’s own website and the online versions of the supplemental bills for these properties to confirm that in some cases the new assessed price is based on the sales price and others it is not. I think there is a certain degree of luck involved perhaps? I looked at 4 recent REOs and in only one case was the assessed value in the supplemental set to the sales price.

The guy on the phone that I spoke with today said that the value on my supplemental bill is not a result of a some “escape tax” loophole but rather what the assessor deemed the house to be worth based on comparable sales at the time of my purchase. I don’t know what triggers the assessor to ignore the sales price but when I mentioned “bank-owned” to the guy he went off on a diatribe about how banks sell properties for what they can get not what they are worth. I guess that one sentence kinda speaks volumes about what I am dealing with here.