Time To Appeal Those Property Taxes

My property tax assessment came a few weeks ago. I opened it up, groaned and stuffed it in the 'to do' pile. I knew the date to appeal was coming up soon so I dragged the thing out again this morning. I noticed a website listed,  www.fultonassessor.org. Apparently you can appeal online this year. I thought I might do that.  But once I got looking around the website I started to get a little...well....put out. The website is very informative - with little effort you can pull up the tax records of everyone around you and see what your neighbors are assessed at. Well this is what got me a little riled up. I know most of these houses, I've been in them - how come so many were assessed much lower than mine when I know that their square footage is more, the build is superior and they have more bedrooms/bathrooms etc etc  etc. One almost identical property on my street was assessed at over $50,000 less than mine. It really wasn't hard to start pulling info off the site. I also looked at my own tax records. Somehow I had an extra bedroom I didn't know about, how did that get there and how did I miss that? Am I being taxed on that? Well I guess so if they are comparing my property to other 5 bedroom properties. I also noticed that the exterior of my house had been given an upgrade on the County site - yes, that would definitely raise the value if the place was put on the market. By now I had a little pile of papers printed out and was on a roll. I looked into comparable sales. Well the economy may be improving but that doesn't seem to be reflected in recent sales in my neighborhood. I printed out the sales, all seeming to support that the fair market value determined by the county was not an accurate assessment.  We refinanced a few months back, the value the appraisers gave was nowhere near the assessed value. I put a copy of that in my stack.

Yes, in the end it took me a couple of hours to get all of my supporting documents for an appeal together. You can decide if it is worth it for you. A couple of minutes on the website and you will quickly know if you are being assessed in line with comparable properties on your street. Take a quick look and make sure your property is described correctly. If, as in my case, you notice a disparity it may be worth those couple of hours. If my appeal is accepted I stand to save  a good chunk in taxes, if not..well...that's how it goes sometimes. I decided not to file online. I will be at the post office tomorrow with a big fat envelope for the folks on Pryor Street.  I'll let you know how it went.