My oh my! just got the newest property tax bills. Have these people got no conscious? The foreclosures I brought for $8700 (4BD, 3 BA fenced with garage renting out for 1200.00) or the one's for , 11K, 13K 16.7,17.5K and on and on back in 10,12,11 at the courthouse steps are now being valued at 130K to 160K -- the nerve.

Gosh why didn't I buy more (cause I had no more money) there's no excuse.

Slip me some cheese to go with my whine!!!!

Went to foreclosure on steps Tuesday-- starting prices of 100K selling for 125K+. Who can make money now? But there buying them up-- all the get rich quick hedge fund people.

I purchased a bank owned foreclosure for $250K and the County Tax Assessor set my tax rate at 1 million dollars. They wouldn't reduce my assessment even though I had 4 State Mandated Certified Appraisals for the Foreclosure, bank listing the property for sale after no bids were received. A third appraisal after I gave them my offer and my banks appraisal for financing.

I had to pay 4 times the tax rate for 2 years. The assessor was making a killing on the interest -- at that time it was over 7%. So we the people filed a class action lawsuit and won a 26 million dollar settlement. All the people had to do was prove the excess assessments and the time they made interest on those ill gotten funds. Only half of the people put in for the money so they Country only had to return half, or 13 million...

I don't know about other places, but our property taxes are based on "market value", not "rebuild value".

So the argument of "I bought this for $x. That's the definition of market value" has about a 50% chance of being accepted as valid reasoning-- depending on who's sitting on the Board that year when the time comes to challenge taxes, and whether or not the tax hikes have come as a result of Austin breathing down the County's neck, saying, "Surely you're not _that_ poor and rural--- go collect more money, mmkay?"

Robert and Deanne thanks for adding your posts.

Here in GA a few years ago the upper courts held that the value of property and assessments must use sales through the foreclosure process as part of the county values.

THAT was a windfall. We appealed every property value

and of course had nothing but foreclosures to compare-- during those years of distress sales. The values set at the board of equalization hearings were good for 3 years. That was to keep the tax commissioner from re-assessing "every year". That ride is now over. ZOOM went the values---------- it finally caught up to us.

Here in Indiana, they send out property assessments right about the time in Spring when you are trying to file your income tax returns for the previous year. Sneaky -- you only have 45 days to appeal their assessment. We were very busy and the assessments sat unopened in a pile on my other half's desk. He was cleaning up his desk the other day and opened them. On one of our properties, the County raised the assessment by 33% and we missed the opportunity to appeal.

Annie,

You can appeal at any time. The adjustment won't show until the next year.

Talk to your assessor. Sometimes, esp if there was an error, they can go back 2 years.

This varies by county - MY county assesses rentals based on the rent as of Jan 1 x a Gross Rent Multiplier figure.

My assessments went DOWN with this new system put in place 2-3? years ago. Most LLs don't know about this.

BRAD

BRAD our Board tried the same thing-- using rental amount. We totally rejected unless they used income from tax return that took into account vacancies. OH THEY said "we can't do that"-- OH WE SAID you can't just use one month rent either. We're now back to all values in area.