Challenge of an over-assessed property

[bigdog]

One thing I didn't see mentioned in this Post was any reference to the
'Age of property' used in valuation ?

I am a Gilford resident and contacted the Assessor's office about my current assessment, and they said this was also a factor in determining valuation. When did this start ???

Their theory was that materials used to build a house today, under current
building regulations, are not the same as they were, 25-50-100 years ago.
Like 2x6 framing, versus 2x4 framing, quality of windows used, roofing, finished basements, etc.
They came up with a long laundry list of differences, which would affect value.

Seems to me they are throwing every possible factor into the house construction they can think of to boost the value, which would increase the taxes. And let's not forget the actual land where the house is built on: AKA 'view' tax', if your property has a view of the lake or mountains, make it more valuable, than a house just 'plunked' down on a vacant lot. And the folks who have waterfront property, OMG !

The old way of determining value by square footage, still applies, but not as much anymore,
many other factors !

[FlyingScot]

Originally Posted by bigdog

One thing I didn't see mentioned in this Post was any reference to the
'Age of property' used in valuation ?

I am a Gilford resident and contacted the Assessor's office about my current assessment, and they said this was also a factor in determining valuation. When did this start ???

Their theory was that materials used to build a house today, under current
building regulations, are not the same as they were, 25-50-100 years ago.
Like 2x6 framing, versus 2x4 framing, quality of windows used, roofing, finished basements, etc.
They came up with a long laundry list of differences, which would affect value.

Seems to me they are throwing every possible factor into the house construction they can think of to boost the value, which would increase the taxes. And let's not forget the actual land where the house is built on: AKA 'view' tax', if your property has a view of the lake or mountains, make it more valuable, than a house just 'plunked' down on a vacant lot. And the folks who have waterfront property, OMG !

The old way of determining value by square footage, still applies, but not as much anymore,
many other factors !

Agreed on most, but a couple of things to keep in mind:

The valuation of any specific house is only to determine the share of the town's total assessments. So the town does not come out ahead when it increases assessments based on age of materials.

The biggest driver in the region is the "view tax". A modest home on the water is worth $500K--$1MM. The same home a few hundred yards away is half that price. A mile from the water, cut it in half again. Among other things, this is a great way to shift the burden to...Massachusetts

[jeffk]

Originally Posted by bigdog

One thing I didn't see mentioned in this Post was any reference to the
'Age of property' used in valuation ?

I am a Gilford resident and contacted the Assessor's office about my current assessment, and they said the was also a factor in determining valuation.

Their theory was that materials used to build a house today, under current
building regulations, are not the same as they were, 25-50-100 years ago.
Like 2x6 framing, versus 2x4 framing, quality of windows used, roofing.
They came up with a long list of differences, which would affect value.

Seems to me they are throwing every possible factor into the house construction they can think of to boost the value, which would increase the taxes. And let's not forget a 'view' tax', if your property has a view of the lake or mountains, make it more valuable, than a house just 'plunked' down on a vacant lot. And the folks who have waterfront property, OMG !

The old way of determining value by square footage, still applies, but not as much anymore.

A key thing to remember is that the valuation is supposed to reflect current market value, and like it or not, a house with a great view is more valuable. So is a house with 2x6 walls instead of 2x4s. And certainly a house by the water has higher value. It is not as easy to translate these types of value adds as it is something like more square footage, but they DO impact the value of the property. If I could likely sell my property for $800K tomorrow because the view is to die for vs. someone with the exact same land and house a half mile down the road valued at $400,000 because their view is lousy, then I should be paying property taxes based on an $800K valuation. Unfortunately, determining value is not an exact science and all of us would like to believe that paying $1 in property tax is a dollar too much.

[DickR]

I would think that a big headache for any town's assessor department would be defending or be forced to adjust an assessment based on someone arguing some point or another. The fairest way to deal with this is to have a computerized system that weighs all the hard data associated with any particular property, assigning some kind of relative value to any aspect of that property as derived from data collected from many property sales, to come up with a total computer-generated valuation. If all properties are valued the same way, the valuation for any property is defensible. The owner would have to challenge the validity of the data describing the property in order to get a total assessment reduced. There should not be any "judgement" made by an assessor as to what a particular property ought to sell for.

[tis]

Unless there is something wrong, like they say you have a sandy beach but you don't, or they say you have 5 bathrooms and 6 bedrooms and you don't, or your neighbor has the exact same property as you do but yours is valued differently, it's pretty hard to get them to change your valuation. If you can compare like to like and yours is valued higher then they might change it. Or they just might change the one you compare it to and make theirs higher.

[jeffk]

Originally Posted by DickR

I would think that a big headache for any town's assessor department would be defending or be forced to adjust an assessment based on someone arguing some point or another. The fairest way to deal with this is to have a computerized system that weighs all the hard data associated with any particular property, assigning some kind of relative value to any aspect of that property as derived from data collected from many property sales, to come up with a total computer-generated valuation. If all properties are valued the same way, the valuation for any property is defensible. The owner would have to challenge the validity of the data describing the property in order to get a total assessment reduced. There should not be any "judgement" made by an assessor as to what a particular property ought to sell for.

I agree that an assessor should not be deciding how much a property is worth. However, he might decide that a property has an excellent view and that "data" could be plugged into a computer program that evaluates how much a "view" is worth in comparative properties. That would be the same as observing there is a brick fireplace and the computer program then calculating the value of that feature. Or, noting the address of the property and that is classified as a desirable neighborhood that commands higher prices. I believe that most of the assessing services do exactly this, feeding the property information into a computer. However, at some point a program makes a comparison to other existing, recently sold properties and "judges" that your property is roughly equivalent considering this "feature". Just because the computer works the numbers it doesn't make it more precise. By the nature of the process, the evaluation has to have some "slop" in the calculations.

[tis]

You are exactly right, Jeff. It is all about comparison to other like properties.