scaredy, I’m kinda surprised you would ask this, but assessed value in CA has absolutely NOTHING to do with current market value and never will, as long as Prop 13 is never repealed.
As a buyer, IMO, it’s actually beneficial to find properties with low assessments. This means the owners (or their family members) have owned them for many years and MAY not owe much on the property, if anything. Assessed value also has nothing to do with how much is currently owed on a property. A property owner with a low assessed value could be overmortgaged or could owe nothing on their property. But more often than not, they have substantial equity and this is the kind of seller you want to deal with, if at all possible, scaredy. As a buyer, you GENERALLY won’t have near as many headaches in transactions with these types of listed properties as you’ve been going through with short sales and other distressed “auctions.”
Occasionally, a low assessment means the subject property is protected by the Mills Act (CA Government Code section 50280 et. seq.). This low tax basis will be passed on to the new buyer. At the time of application, the subject property has to be at least 75 years old and meet other criteria and there has to be enough coffers in a particular judisdiction for the supervisors/council to approve a particular property (or a group of Mills Act applicants all at once).
I have noticed over the last two years or so that Mills Act properties generally have higher asking prices than they are worth. This could be due to a widespread slowdown/stoppage by jurisdictions to approve new Mills Act applications (due to loss of tax revenue from appeals/reassessments). However, I am not sure if the sellers of these properties are actually getting the prices they want for these properties or instead removing them from the market if it doesn’t sell for their desired price.
