Welp - Friday again already. We got a little dusting of snow last night and it's lightly snowing right now. My dd just had her 5th anniversary with the company she works for. How is that possible? LOL. A few weeks ago I had my 18th anniversary where I work.
I just placed an order for the clothing for my mom with JC Penney. $200 worth, so they'd better not lose them! The jeans were much cheaper than Blair, plus they also carry a petite size, which should work a little better for her since she's short.
Just got the email notification the county has uploaded the property tax bills. Unlike Diane's 11% increase in her county, ours increased over 19% - and that's with my total assessed value getting adjusted to a total increase of 32% (instead of the pre-appeal 52%), compared to you saying you had a 50% or so increase. Sounds like you got a much better deal with your county, Diane. My county apparently didn't adjust their mills down very much. And this is with our county short paying the state mills. I'm sure it will go up, after that gets resolved. So, once my escrow is adjusted my house payment is now going up almost $100 a month. Yay......... Doing the math, my appealing adjustment saved me $937. If I hadn't appealed my total tax bill would have increased $2000 a year, by 36%.
DAN next door and the couple that owns lot 6, with land only, all our land values went up 118%, they are really going to notice it! Our land portion of our tax bill went from $600 to $1158. Almost double.
I think that most people didn't appeal. One of the reasons likely being the "spin" of "well, your taxes aren't going to go up that much". When I was doing my research and spreadsheet of all the properties along the river in our area, most values went up in that 30-35% range. I recently checked back to see if any property values that I was tracking went down (due to appealing, like I did) and only found one that went down. I have a feeling all these property owners are going to be surprised to get this amount of increase in their tax bills.
Oh well, it's only money, right?
I should clarify I rounded up. It was 47% or maybe 48%. I didn’t go back and look at that. It’s because in the last few years a few neighbors have sold at very high prices. We’ve lived here for 24 years, and in that time very few houses sold. About 4 years ago that changed and our assessed value is finally reflecting the price increases.
ReplyDeleteThe tax base in my county has been increasing because we have some new developments, so they can increase spending and still decrease mills.
All 4 of my kids own houses in town, and their new assessments and taxes make no sense. The one with the nicest house, and the nicest neighborhood, had a very small increase in assessed value, and their taxes went up less than ours did. My dd had a massive increase in both. If these two were to sell the first kid could sell for at least 75,000 less than the other one, yet her assessed value is higher. It makes no sense!
Diane
Sorry, I said that wrong. My son could sell for more than my dd, yet his assessed value is substantially less than hers. His would sell for about 350,000, and she’d be lucky to get $260,000-275,000.
ReplyDeletethis is the same situation with our house vs our neighbors, Mr&Mrs house. It would definitely sell for more than ours. It's a concrete log home (very expensive) and almost 1500 sf bigger than our house, yet it's assessed at way less than our house. Makes no sense and the only sort of explanation the assessor could give me is that their completely finished daylight basement is only assessed at $18/sf. I asked how is that even possible and got no answer.
Deletemean to add their completely finished daylight basement is 2500 sf
DeleteThat should read "I was led to believe by all the realtors we have dealt with over our travels, when you look for a house...." Cat stepped on the keyboard, so now I have sentence fragments make me seem like I'm tossing back whiskey in my coffee! Sorry!
DeleteIn the years we've lived here our assessed values were lower then market values. The state passed something that the assessed values need to be at market values, so hence the 40-50% increase we saw across the board (well not across the board, the state gave business's a break, so in addition to higher assessed values, residential property owners are also now being burdened with a higher proportion of the taxes). Stay off that whiskey! ;)
DeleteI agree, I think the #1 reason people don't appeal is it's too daunting of a process. Not to mention the news articles going around here were saying "be careful appealing...your property taxes might go up more!".....ya, guess who that "spin" was coming from...
DeleteDoes the mc just accept that clothes get lost or will they attempt to find them? I had a friend who said only her mother's best clothes were lost. She and others thought the workers took things.
ReplyDeleteI think it's some of both, they just accept it and probably don't spend much time looking.
DeleteGood for you for appealing it. I think if you just let it skate they would never have reviewed it, so your hard work won (a little anyway)!
ReplyDeleteit would not have been reviewed, that's for sure.
DeleteThis may see a bit random, but I was reminded of your hunt for shelf stable milk. My partner picked up some milk from the dollar store the other day, and it tasted pretty much the same, and is shelf stable for only $1.25. I don’t know if you have any dollar stores or anything, but you could try there if you are still looking for options.
ReplyDeleteI also came across a little video of "good things to pick up at Dollar Stores" and shelf milk was one of them. I do think we have one of those stores in the city. It's just not in the area we spend our time (Walmart, mom's m/c and doctors) but I'll have to remember if we are in that area to take a few minutes to stop in and see.
DeleteGlad your appeal worked in a way for you! The process is daunting and I think Meg is right, it just turns people off of trying. I hope the sweaters can be kept this time around, but I do think they must be trading and staff don't care to fix it when they do the laundry etc.
ReplyDeleteI didn't want to appeal either. I wonder how many actually take it all the way to the county appeal board hearings. Probably not many.
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