First thing to appeal a real estate tax, when receiving your property tax notice, is to check the deadline for challenging the market value of the home the tax assessor imposed on you. Check the real estate tax deadline for appeal. If it’s only a few weeks, you’ll need to do some very basic homework fast.
Sometimes it’s worth your time to appeal your real estate taxes. Blanket reassessments are done for a town or county roughly every 8 to 20 or more years. They are done as a means to reevaluate those properties for tax purposes.
Say you appeal your property tax and won a $1,000 property tax reduction, if that property doesn’t get reevaluated by a city or county reassessment, that property tax reduction will have likely be worth over $10,000. If it was only $500, we’re talking about $5,000 more in your pocket given a possible reassessment in 10 years.
Appealing Your Property Tax Bill
Since property taxes are determined by the worth of your property, the important fact is to know what the town is actually saying that your property is worth. That can be confusing since viewing your property tax bill they show that amount as an “assessment” and when using a sales ratio, that missing piece is absent.
One needs to call the town’s tax assessor to get the sales ratio for the year you’re appealing the property tax. Often times the sales ratio is call by different names. Depending on the town our county, this sales ratio can end up getting called the average ratio, evaluation level, director’s ratio, the common level of 100% of accurate worth, the RAR (home assessment ratio) or the equalization rate (which could end up being comparative to the product sales ratio).
The total assessed valuation on your property tax bill multiplied by the sales ratio is the actual market valuation placed on your home. The sales ratio changes every year since the last blanket reassessment. So, if the sales ratio is 90% and the home is assessed at $500,000, what tax assessor is saying is that you’re getting taxed on the home’s worth of $555,555 (.90 divided into $500,000).
Appeal Real Estate Tax Comparable Sold Homes
Now that you’re armed with the actual market value that is placed on your home and what you’re getting taxed at, you’ll want to find comparable sold homes. If you go to the home page of this site, you’ll find a free offer to get access to sold comparable homes in your town that you can use to make your case. Also, you’ll get an overview on how to proceed as well a comparable sales analysis so you can appeal your property tax.
For more information, visit: https://www.kiplinger.com/
