well, the stinking bastards went up a grand on my property tax and its time for an appeal. BTW this is Cobb County but any successful appeal I'm interested in. If you were successful, I am curious as to what angle you approached it? Comparable Sq ft and age? find larger houses with lower assessment? Attempt to prove that I can't sell my house for what they say its worth? I can find just about anything to back my claim that I am paying too much, but what has worked for you? If anyone has inside knowledge of how EXACTLY the assessment works I would love to know this algorithm! LOL I see houses that sold within 1 month of each other and less than 1mi between, very similar, same price, and one would be almost 2K more in taxes. let me know
I did, but it was after my refinance and I had all of the appraisal information already in hand. They county had no choice but to drop mine, but I didn't really go though any appeals 'process,' I just had the closing attorney forward the paperwork into the county, when I just got my assessment it had already been corrected.
We just asked (called) Dekalb Co. to look at the selling prices of the house in our neighborhood and they changed it quickly. I was actually shocked at how easy it and quick it was. I think the number is on the back of your last tax statement.
everyone should always appeal. the county generally has very poor legal footing in assessing increase tax based on property value except in very generous market conditions. however, government hopes you'll just lay down and take it. thats how they get extra revenue, the complacency of those they levy the tax on. again, EVERYONE should appeal EVERY TIME without exception. force the government to make their case.
http://www.zillow.com/advice-thread...mming-Georgia-Property-Tax-Assessment/437313/ and http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24744848/AJC-Propertytaxfilinginfo-3312012.pdf last year's articles
Yes, I did. Multiple times. I got comp sales in the area once that proved the value was way below what they said. Another time I had an appraisal done for $300. With the comps done, they actually debated it some and I had to go into a hearing because their appraiser said the basement was finished when reality was the renters had really just thrown some carpet on top of the cement floor. With the appraisal, they just lowered it to the appraised value - no questions asked.
I can tell you in Fulton they will only accept comps from the year that they gathered the data to make the assessment. Appraisals are not accepted. I've done this twice. Last time I met with the board was 2012. The comps that made up the assessment that I was appealing were from 2010. If I had turned up with 2011 comps, they would have thrown my appeal out. Here's what I did before my hearing: I called the assessors office. My question was: how do you calculate the assessed value? The case worker was very helpful. He pointed me to the Fulton Co Assessors Office website. Told me how/where to navigate to their sales database (it was somewhat convoluted). Gave me my neighborhood code so that I could filter only nearby, relevant comps. Explained that I could use foreclosures. Advised that I download the info to Excel and purge out all the non comp entries, such as larger houses, more bedrooms, duplexes, $1 sales, etc. Once I did that, I had ~40 comps. My sqft range was +/-200sqft of what I owned. I went to the hearing. The case worker was there. I showed the 3 'peers' hearing my case what data I had. They reviewed it. They asked to see a pic of my house, which I had. They asked where in the range of comps I thought I should be. My response was that it needed to be right in the middle - I wasn't looking for any favors, just equal treatment. So I named my amount. The case worker was asked if he had any objection and he said no. Admitted that I was incorrectly assessed. The assessed value was reduced almost 40%. Later that evening, I celebrated with some Bell's Two Hearted