Good News on Property Taxes for Many Residents
Tax bills will be mailed out soon, and most residents should receive a nice surprise - reduced assessed values and lower bills than last year. (Unless, of course, you purchased in 2009, then you can probably expect a supplemental assessment instead).
According to a press release from the Sacramento County Assessors Office:
For the first time in the post-Prop 13 era, the roll value has declined from the prior year. This year's amount was $9 billion less than the 2009-09 assessment roll total, or a 6.4% drop... The Assessor's Office reviewed the market values of residential properties in Sacramento Count and reduced the assessed values for over 170,000 of them...
You can find out immediately what your January 2009 assessed value was, just go to the Assessors Office Parcel Viewer, accept the terms of use, and enter your house number and street. The resulting page will give you a pretty complete description of your property and the new valuation.
For my property, which I purchased in June of 2008, the reduction was about 10%.
If you think that the assessed value is too high, you should consider filing a "Decline-in-Market Value Request for Assessor Review" with the Assessor's Office, providing your estimated value, comparable sales examples and explanations.
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I gathered up statistics from 15 neighborhood sales between December 2008 and early March 2009 that I got from Zillow, and calculated an average price per square foot of house (about $170/sq ft), and an average price per square foot of lot (about $40/sq ft). When I multiplied those numbers and my properties' sizes, and took the average of the two results, I got just about my new assessment. That made me think that I don't need to spend time requesting a review. The one thing I wonder though, is whether we all pay a bit too much because many of us got valuable consideration in addition to our property as part of the sales price (points towards financing, prepaid HOA fees, etc), which would inflate our properties values.
Good point, Jim., I worked in property taxation for decades and I know that non-real property items may not be considered in the assessment. The assessor's dilemma is discovering these items. When weresidents all completed the PCOR (Preliminary Change of Ownership Report) at our title companies, I'll bet no one disclosed the prepaid HOA or other enticements on the form. I know I forgot to do so.
So now it will be hard to prove that your home was initially overassessed since you have likely filed a statement under penalty of perjury about the terms of purchase that did not disclose this crucial info.