I was just looking at homes for sale in my town, not moving, just seeing what's out there. There are homes about the size of mine, maybe a little smaller, but their taxes are WAY LESS! I did not see 1 house with taxes as high as mine, unless it was like twice as much as mine is worth!

I always thought we paid a lot, everything needs to be reassessed, but what about disputing the taxes? What do I have to do for that? We bought it as a foreclosure a few years ago and I am actually afraid that if I dispute it, maybe they could actually go up instead of down? We have put a lot of work into it.

Do I go for it, or be thankful I'm only paying what I am?

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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer

It's impossible to say since I don't know the rate you're paying. I appealed my taxes because I could see that I was being taxed at the incorrect rate. My appeal was approved. My friend appealed and she lost. They said that she hadn't paid enough taxes and sent her another bill for almost $3700. She had to pay the full amount of her appealed taxes and lost almost 4000 bucks in addition to her original bill. She wishes she hadn't appealed. It can go either way so research before you act!

I'm assuming that you're aware that in some states, you're automatically taxed at a higher rate unless you specifically notify them that this is your primary residence and you want to be taxed at the residential rate. Do you need to notify your tax office to lower an automatic rate?

PS - If the tax office is aware that you have put a lot of work into your house, they assess you taxes per improvement. If you received permits, they're aware of it and they tax you higher than a new house that has the same amenities. It's unfair but remodeling an existing home sometimes ends up costing more in taxes than if you had bought another home.

Our house was built in the 1990's, but a lot of houses in this town were built before that and their taxes just haven't caught up with ours. We didn't change anything except pave the driveway and we nofitied them of that and they said it wouldn't change the taxes. I DON'T know if all of the things done had town approval, you never know that with a foreclosure which is what I worry about.

The only one who pays mre than us is our neighbor and maybe for some reason when the houses on this road were built they had a field day at tax time, I don't know. The 4 houses on our road alone pay about $45,000 a year.

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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer

I disputed my property taxes several years ago and got an adjustment. Mine was a pretty simple case because our house is a typical colonial and the plan was used by the builder in a few different places in town, so it was very easy to get a few comps. Our issue was that the square footage was computed wrong. It was clear to see, so went right through. It was only a few hundred dollars difference.

cj/

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I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code. -Emo Phillips

I have never had to dispute our property taxes, so I am not sure what you would have to do. I would probably be afraid they would actually go up. We have been very lucky, our taxes have actually gone down for the last four years, plus the town I live in has one of the lowest rates in our area. Our last tax bill was down to under a thousand dollars, so I wouldn't dare complain. Good luck with whatever decision you make!

I appealed last year.

I had our realtor print out homes that were "like" mine.. Bedroom,bath, sqft etc.

The problem was they were not taxing on TODAY's values, but on the year 2005.
THey had finally gotten all of the adjustments in and it just happened to coincide with a drop in values.

They did drop my home 30K in value which saved $400ish. I offered to sell my home to anyone that would pay their "value" and amazingly noone offered it. We would be luck to sell our home for $50K off the value they placed on it.

when our county readjusts values.. their is chance (in none ) that they will lower our homes "value" This was before the economy crunch.. so yeah right.

YOu need to find out Which year they are using to determine your value and check your property card and make sure everything is accurate.

We had 115% percent of our sq ft either carpeted, tiled, or woodfloor.... I asked how they determined the amount and they all said hmmmmmm..... so they changed that. They also had the numer of fixtures off in 1 bathroom saying I had 5 not 4 that took some value off etc.

We have disputed ours. Our city sends out a notice with what the value is and then there are a couple of weeks of "dispute time" where you can schedule and appt (or just go in and wait) to show proof of your case. Thing is here, you have to have apples to apples proof. Two houses on opposite ends of town aren't proof. They have to be close (in the same subdivision usually) and similar size. I go online to our city records and look at what the other similar and smaller houses are valued at for tax purposes. I print off their info, compare it with ours and write it all up for the proof. We got ours lowered $40K last time which was a couple of years ago. We put some improvements in since so I know it will go up again.

My brother bought a foreclosure and his tax value was about $50K more than he paid. He took in a copy of the appraisal that was done at purchase and they lowered it $30K

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

I disputed mine 5 years ago or so. We have an odd floor plan and the assessor thought we had added a second floor. I called them up, they came back out and adjusted the appraisal back to where it was.