I purchased my house in December of 2013. Obviously, before closing the house was assessed for the mortgage process by a 3rd party. The assessment came in at approximately 90,000 higher than the previous assessment, and was to the penny what I actually paid for the house.
About a month ago the town (Alden) sent me a reassessment notification that they now assess the house at the same amount the 3rd party assessed it for when I got my mortgage. They gave a couple options to fight the reassessment.
What I’m wondering is if it’s even worthwhile to try to fight this (miss work, spend time in meetings, etc). They know what I paid for my house, and that’s exactly what it is now assessed for (raising my taxes about $900 a year). In my mind, that’s what I paid for the house and they know that, so I don’t have much of a basis to fight it.
its become standard practice for tax assessments to match what was paid. I imagine it would be dumb to argue it…you would have to basically say that you overpaid for the house.
My dad fought and won a reassessment, it took a few trips a lot of time and research on his part, but he won… for a little while. The following year they decided to reassess the entire neighborhood raising it back up again, he said fuck it, not worth the hassle.
You don’t have a chance in hell fighting it when you just paid that for the house. There’s no better assessment of a house’s true market value than what someone just paid for it.
I’ve been through the assessment challenge process in Amherst and won, but the situation was far different. Amherst happened to reassess my house at the same time I was refinancing. Part of the refinancing process was having an FHA approved inspector come out and go through the home top to bottom to assess the value. His estimate came out 25k less than Amherst’s 10 second drive by and take a picture inspection. I set up an appointment with the assessment challenge board and when I sat down they asked, “What evidence to you have to support challenging your assessment”. I dropped a 1/2" thick binder on the table with all my refinance and assessment paperwork and said “this”. Challenge accepted, got the letter a couple weeks later that they dropped the value 20k. It wasn’t worth fighting over the other 5k, but it was BS that they still got a little more out of me without any evidence of a change in value on their side.
I’m in Alden as well. My grandmother has been a real estate estate agent for 35+ years selling in Elma, East Aurora, Alden, etc. She said there is less than a 5% chance in winning, especially if you just purchased and they obviously know the price paid.
Mine only went up a few $'s, when I’m already paying almost $7k in taxes whats another few dollars :ham:
Technically the appraised value for a mortgage and the ad valorem value used for taxing are not necessarily the same thing and each definition of “value” can be different in significant ways. Or they can be reasonably similar. It is different going from tax jurisdiction to tax jurisdiction unless there are some state level regulations in place establishing a uniform definition for taxing purposes.
while what you paid may be a strong indication of the value of the property, it is a very limited sample from which to draw a conclusion. There are so many different factors that go into the purchase of an individual house by a specific person that it is hard to say that single transaction is absolutely definitive.
The best way to tell if your taxes are out of whack is to find a very similar property to your own and find out what the taxes are for it. If your neighbor down the road has the exact same house as you but is paying a grand less in taxes, there is something very wrong regardless of what you and he paid for the properties.
Yeah, like everyone else is saying, if you’re assessed at the purchase price, it’s assessed correctly.
I won a challenge a few years ago for a home I’d just purchased that was re-assessed for more than 30% more than what I paid for it.
I’d been calling the assessor to question the assessment for months, had my attorney’s office call a few times with no response.
I ended up filing a challenge petition, with 3 comps that sold in the same year, and the banks assessment for my mortgage (which was within $1,000 of the purchase price) and one of the board members was trying to tell me that the bank intentionally under-assessed the property.
When I brought up that it was an arms length sale, had been on the market for nearly 3 years, and mentioned that I had been calling the assessor for months with no response, finally the assessor spoke up and said he was familiar with the property and would drop the assessment to the purchase price, with no action required by the board. So I wasted all that time for what the assessor should have been able to take care of via a phone call.
Not all towns are assessed at full value. Alden just went from 50% of market vale to 100%. So our assessed values around doubled and is not supposed to be what the current value is. Even though my property was taken to market value it only affected my taxes under $100.
I know Elma has not gone under reval for around 30 years so the assessment prices are stupid low. All depends where u live in wny.
Any other place in just about the entire country has cheaper property taxes than nys. Even Massachusetts which is regarded as having high property taxes, are generally under half of what a comparable place in nys would be… After fighting my own property tax battle, I eventually ended up getting an attorney, who settled on a reduction, which was worth it. But in any event, nys sucks, and wth as much as my property taxes are, it’s made me seriously contemplate moving out of state…
