In a  news story http://www.gazette.net/stories/08052009/bethnew200940_32530.shtml a Maryland man successfully argued for a 50 percent drop in his property assessment because the building significantly damaged his property value.

The county’s Property Tax Appeal Board ordered on June 23 that Cunningham’s property tax assessment be reduced 50 percent to $452,000. The board changed the assessment “due to the appalling condition of the next door residence and its demonstrated negative effect on the value of neighboring properties.”

Attorneys charges are quite high. $275 an hour is typical. The return on investment may not pan out since they are not experts in valuation.

Valuation is based on comparable evidence and adjustment factors to account for differences of square footage, age on home, and so on.  An appraiser will charge about $300 for the appraisal and another $500 or so to take time to present the evidence for you to the Board of Equalization.  That’s the “professional” route.

That is why I offer the cost effective approach do-it-yourself manual for those of us without deep pockets.

Establishing value is not rocket science. It is quite simple: Gather property tax information on your home, gather information on recent sales and sold listings in your neighborhood area, analyze the information and evaluate your property and then present your case to the assessor or Tax Appraisal Board.

A few hours effort and you could save multiple thousands of dollars in the lifetime of a reduced assessment.

If you don’t want to go it alone, hiring an attorney and appraiser combination is going to cost you upward of $1,000 by the time it is all done …. and there is no guarantee you’ll win.

Any appraiser and attorney will be glad to work for you at those rates and will do a good job.

Gary Johnston wrote in www.nrtoday.com "Property owners are in a no-win situation. We have no sales tax and do our share, but when does it end? When I filed for a hearing about high property taxes, the tax office asked me to drop it saying taxes go up each year due to a law on the books. I take it Measure 50. They said market values were only there as reference.

Raising market values is good for Douglas County. It’s not a benefit to me. How much my house goes up in value is only good if I sell. I’m a resident, not here to make a quick buck. Their market values are a joke. My actual market value this year went down $5,200, but my assessed value went up $6,510, so my taxes went up. They need modify tax bills. What an accounting nightmare: 3 percent discount with full payment, 2 percent with two-third payment, one-third with no discount.

Why not bill in July and give me a 10 percent discount? Or send one bill with half or full amount due in December and balance in March? This works in other states. If you only pay part, they send a reminder to pay. How much does that cost taxpayers?

Property Taxes should be based on what you paid for your house. Tax rates should be fair. When you sell your home, the sale price should become the new owner’s tax base value. Please stop playing games over market values and assessed values. House values have decreased in the last two years. Houses are not selling and the situation has gotten worse during the last six months, but my property taxes keep going up. I feel like I’m being pencil whipped by the county tax assessor.

We need change or bailout."

Growing property taxes hurt those struggling financially as well as seniors living on a fixed budget. Whatever happened to the savings promised by community? Economics of scale resulting in lowered fixed costs are the promise of Economics 101. Perhaps it’s the thoughtless tax and spend mentality coupled with cozy benefits and pay packages.

Funding the cost of early retirements, often 20-years with lavish pension benefits, crush the budget and result in ever increasing tax charges. Nowhere do we see property tax revolts. Those struggling have little time and resources to do battle.  Most simply sell their homes and leave area.
 

The unfairness of the property tax assessment is that it seems to raise every year.  It never seems to fall.  It’s curious that most are not interested in opposing this tax other than electing tax reform politicians who seem to cave in, once elected, and forget tax cuts.

Property tax bills are regressive, repressive. Why should everyone continue to pay higher taxes each year? When you give a nickel to a politician he’ll almost never give it back. Economies of scale, when and as optimized, are supposed to be less expensive. Economics 101!

Where is the moral outrage?  Both presidential candidates are seeped with lobby money, one with a quasi Marxist agenda, the other with quasi free market agenda and both sleepwalking through a financial dilemma that attacks every property taxpayer and American. 

Unqualified buyers were encouraged into mortgages, the root cause for the financial meltdown.  Our financial subprime woes started with Jimmy Carter who, though well meaning, dumb-headedly enacted legislation to encourage loans to people who were bad credit risks.  Buying a home and paying property taxes was supposed to be the cure all for financial happiness and getting ahead.  His administration began distancing itself from sound lending and accounting standards.

Along came Bill Clinton who put extra teeth in the law by punishing mortgage and investment companies that did extend credit to people who were bad credit risks.  He put them into houses they couldn’t afford let alone the property taxes on.  A further deregulating and credit risk was encouraged by mortgage companies; those that didn’t comply to lose lending practices were hampered from expanding their footprint in the community.

Who bought these bogus high risk loans? Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. They, furthermore, became haven for sending political contributions to politician encouraging this bad credit homeownership cancer to keep growing.  Mortgage company lobbies’ threw hundreds of millions of dollars to politicians’ greed in order to perpetuate this circus even as residents of high-foreclosure neighborhoods suffered additional pain from high property taxes.

AIG and other insurance companies insured these loans.  Their primary purpose is to evaluate and insure against debt risk.  Their leverage was set at 12 to 1 meaning that they had to have one dollar in assets to cover 12 dollars or risk.  They threw millions of lobby money to leveraging its recirculation rate at a reserve rate of more than 30-1.  With such a high-risk and profit expansion levels, any big bump in real estate valuation put those assets at risk.

How can fraudulent financial wizardry that has banks and brokerage firms leveraged at 30-1 be endorsed by Greenspan and Bernanke?  How could they have allowed this shell game to continue? Quasi-Marxist promoters of Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and similar entitlement steering organizations bamboozled lawmakers into giving away the farm. What’s wrong with renting if you can’t afford a house or taking a bus if you can’t afford keeping a car?

The House Finance Chief, SEC Chairman, Banking Committee Chairman and any Congressman or public official accepting lobby money were shills for this cancer. Prison and banishment from public office should be their reward for violating the public trust! Politicians accepting lobby money need prison and banished from public office. Lobby money is a bribe. If you bribe a cop for not giving you a speeding ticket you go to jail.  If a public official accepts a bribe, shouldn’t they be put in jail as well?

A balloon full of hot air eventually has to crash. Instead of letting the markets sort this out, bailout is the new mantra. The global credit boom is OVER.  Throwing out 700 billion dollar band aids laden with lobby inspired pork on a problem is meaningless. There is little the Fed or Congress can do to change it. Thanks to the weasels the Emperor has no clothes. The danger of ignoring economic realities is how we ended in this financial crisis.  Where is the outrage? 

Lower real estate prices has many towns raising tax rates to compensate for lower assessments.  If you compare your home’s value to comparative values of recently sold homes there is a good chance you qualify for a property tax appeal and can profit from a property tax appeal.  At least, you should look into whether you have a case.
 

Overly high property assessments can hamper the survival prospects for homeowners on a tight budget. You’ll hear about property tax reforms to sharply reduce those burdens.  The ideas often are to create transparency in the implementation of these property assessment. 

There’s a reason why people are leaving certain states and real estate property taxes are one of the major contributing factors to that problem.  Real estate taxes can be appealed and many overlook the possibilities because of complacency or lack of knowledge.

Property taxes should be predictable, neutral and transparent especially in years of escalating property values.  Tax jargon often reduces understanding and throws people for a loop. One suggestion is to use the acquisition value or actual sales price to assess value, not a constantly changing base.

Another popular idea is to tax only the capital gains from the sale of a property. This would be the only property tax the town receives.  Capital expenses would be covered by a sales tax or VAT (value added tax) instead.

Still others want to promote to cap tax increases to mirror corresponding cost-of-living boosts, and require a public vote for anything larger. Capping annual increases in value at 5 percent is a popular idea.

Some elect to have others do the tax appeal for them.  This professional route is an expensive alternative.  An appraiser will charge $250 or more for the appraisal and perhaps $500 for spending a day waiting to make his presentation to the municipal authorities. The added cost of an attorney to represent you in court will cost in the neighborhood of $250 an hour.

If your {gut|intuition|6th sense||insight|instincts} tell you that you have been paying too much in property taxes you should look into it. Find a reliable property tax information guide and you will be shown specifically whether you qualify for a real estate property tax cut.  Most guides don’t get into the mechanics of doing an appeal and are only a fluff overview of the process. 

 A {excellent|workable|good|high-grade} guide offers everything needed to know to compile a persuasive property tax appeal.  It will include how to examples and provide all the necessary forms. Property tax reduction for land or home, is made clear and easy to implement.
 

California faced with a run-away budget and squeezing taxpayers to the hilt , Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order July 31 to slash the pa of 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage. California has a property tax cap limiting the tax to 1% of the value of a property. Other states simply raise property taxes.

California’s legislator was unable to reach a budget deal to close the$ 15.2 billion dollar deficit.  Considering the cash flow squeeze Arnold signed an executive order elimination for 22,000 part-time jobs and cutting worker salaries of 200,000 state workers to minimum wage.

Other state like New York ($5.2 billion shortfall) also faces a budget crisis. Unfortunately, other states without a spending caps on real estate taxes take the cheap shot by passing the ball directly to the homeowner. It’s the easy road to take in order to balance their bloated budgets.

Real estate tax assessments jolt residents of many towns across the nation as residents find sticker shock when they open their disclosure notices.  Without property tax caps, property valuations and tax changes keep increasing.

Take any straw poll in any state of the union and you would find the overwhelming majority would favor property tax caps. Representative government should have enacted such citizen homeowner protection legislation long ago.  It was the tax revolt in California that many believe led to the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Lawmakers yearn  to change the law but it would not be a politically popular move.

The sentiment behind the cap is that older homeowners should not be priced out of their homes through run-away higher taxes.  Future dark economic clouds spell bad news for homeowners.  With housing prices decreasing in value, municipal and state governments are raising property taxes to meet their budgetary excesses.  That’s the way it was always was done.  Not so with a California type Proposition 13 real estate tax cap

We wonder how many would like to see government employees getting minimum wage until they trim the budget excesses and lived within their means.  If more state enacted property tax caps that wish might just come true.

Contact http://www.propertytaxax.com for complete do-it-yourself help or for entrepreneurs seeking to help people appeal their property taxes as a business at  http://www.propertytaxconlsult.com for more insights and helpful information into this topic.  Direct line: (973) 663-3533  Email: mail@propertytaxconsult.com
 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Modest near-term movement is expected in existing-home sales, with a recovery in sales seen during the second half of the year, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors®.

But they have been wrong many a time before. In certain markets the decline in price has been severe to say the least.

Other voices say existing-home sales are flat and new-home sales are likely to decline 18% in 2008

Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, is forecast at 3.7 percent this year and 2.4 percent in 2009. Inflation-adjusted disposable personal income is projected to grow 1.5 percent in both 2008 and 2009.

The market price and cost of homes is going down, but state and municipal sending keeps increasing; therefore property taxes keep going up.

When it comes to scrutinizing your property tax assessments and the furor for property tax cuts, property tax caps or any kind of property tax relief, don’t hold your breath. Often times there is an opportunity to reduce your property taxes just from the choice of comparables you look at.

If you compare your home to the prices of recently sold home and use some basic arithmetic, you may find that there is a 20% or so reduction opportunity lurking in the corners via a property tax appeal.

Imagine you had an effective property tax guide to carry around in your back pocket. Any time you desired, you could utilize your property tax guide to crunch the numbers and effect a property tax reduction. Now imagine this property tax guide on your desktop.
Well, you’re not likely to come across a property tax guide anywhere else – but here’s the next best thing. Introducing the world’s best PROPERTY TAX REDUCTION GUIDE!

You’ll find how to reduce your real estate taxes and more at http://www.propertytaxax.com
 

While you are celebrating Independence Day, PropertyTaxAx would like to help you celebrate your financial independence by making you aware of the business opportunity that offers an inexpensive coarse that gets you in a position to appeal the property taxes of others!

Property tax consulting is a business that helps others appeal their taxes. Very few have the know how or have the skill to do it. This is a genuine home business opportunity.

At www.propertytaxconsult.com you’ll find a home study coarse that has helped may improve their skills to a point where they have developed a lucrative home business.

Be Independent from your job and have a Happy 4th