I know this is an old thread.Thanks to EconProf. for bringing this up every year and for Bearish girl’s frequent helpful forum comments and PM’s on the topic.

It’s is appeal time again. Just follow the Prof’s instructions if you have not done this before. Everything needed for the application for a lowered assessed value is online. I know most areas have not dropped in the last year but we are still talking about Jan of 2012 values.Maybe some people still have not filed since values dropped?

I finished my first appeal(2011) and the assessor agreed on a value for 2012 also, so I won’t have to appeal this year. It took a while to get over valued because I built two houses and a detached garage on land that was purchased very inexpensively. Every time something got built the assessment would go up. I over paid property taxes for a few years though.

The point EconProf made about leveraging the assessor against going to a hearing is spot on.It seems the assessor’s appraiser also tries to use tax payer inertia in the same way.Don’t fall for it if you think you can make a fairly decent argument for a lower comps.

The appraiser initially didn’t agree to what I asked for. I gave good arguments and DATA and they lowered it to what I was asking and lowered the next year by an additional 8% based on our discussion of how hard hit my area continued to be in 2012.(if it keeps going soon we will pay no taxes).

I took up the argument by email, which they don’t seem to want to respond to, but usually is nonetheless effective. I followed up phone calls with emails even though they wouldn’t acknowledge them.Not sure if this helped, but I know they got them and read them based on later phone conversations. I always try to get an email chain going in any dispute.

My opinion is that the system leans towards overcharging of taxes in several ways. Every year, even after I was done building and while the market was still falling, my assessment went up(which is bullshit). In the future I will file an appeal any time my bill goes up even 1% more than the market does and I will request a larger chunk off than is realistic as a negotiating starting point….only because the assessors office seems to have proved to me, that otherwise, you start off in the hole.