To Challenge Your Property Tax Assessment Or Not?

what a timely story. my 2010 assessment was bumped up approx. 4% to a number higher than the asking price for comparable units currently on sale. the 10% circuit breaker still keeps me OK but will I appeal? probably.

if the city government wants the revenue upside when property prices rise then they have to be willing to want the revenue downside when property prices fall.

We appealed 2009 and won, sort of. While we have a signed stipulation giving us a lower assessment for both 2009 and 2010 (signed in October of 2008) the government has yet to apply that stipulation. So both 2009 and 2010 still show the higher amount, not the lower stipulated value. We’ve talked to the assessor (an extremely nice guy) who promises to get it fixed on the DC Gov end, but still recommended we appeal 2010 just to be safe.

Our 2009 appeal was initially denied, and we had to file a second level appeal. For that one we went with the appeal where you just submit your appeal in writing (we were not present) and the appeals board comes to a decision. If the stipulated value is eventually applied to our assessment it will have been worth it, as it’s a decent savings on our end.

I tried to appeal last year when they appraised my condo $75,000 more then recent sales. Despite my following the procedure and repeated follow up calls they never responded.

I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to invest significant time of from work and that it wasn’t worth it.

I’m definitely appealing…my total value assessment is 11.2% higher than 2009. I’m assuming something is terribly wrong with their system or someone secretly installed a new floor on my condo…

An additional note from our successful appeal: They agreed to a lower amount, but not based on the falling real estate prices (the basis of our appeal). In fact they specifically noted that although much of the US was experiencing a decline in real estate, they could find no evidence that our area was suffering from this problem.

They did agree to a lower assessment, but it was based on mistakes by the original assessment of our unit and not market conditions. Of course our appeal was almost a year ago, maybe you’d have better luck with the market conditions argument today.

Increase in property value? Ha. I understand that DC needs the revenue and we are certainly the people who can most bear it, but realistically, with so many units on the market and with them selling at low prices, often much below assessed value, it is hard to imagine that property has gone up in value by any metric.

Ultimately, if enough people appeal, they will just raise the tax rate, not the values, so in some fashion you will pay a bit more.

The assessment on my unit actually lagged the market on the upswing, so the small (2%) increase this year isn’t unreasonable. The assessment may be high by a few thousand dollars, but the time and effort for an appeal is definitely not worth it when each $1,000 decrease in value only saves $8.50 in property taxes.

My tax assessment is $25K higher than an appraisal that I had completed ~ 2 months ago.

I was expecting the worst but actually thought mine was about right – the 2009/2010 was down about 10% from the 2008/2009 assessment. but it’s a newish building so their was no built up appreciation, the assessment was based on the original purchase price a couple of years ago.

I am definitely appealing. One ridiculous part of OTR’s little pipe dream is that my assessment has not gone up the past 2 times, and now it has, by about $40K.

Maybe OTR realized this year that they need more money to cover the millions Harriette Walters spent at Neiman Marcus. But that shouldn’t be OUR problem.

We closed on our condo in October and I haven’t seen a tax assessment. Should we have received by now, and if not, how can we request it? And if we’d like to appeal, what is the process?
Thanks…

If you know your square and lot number, you can check the 2010 assessment here:

http://www.taxpayerservicecenter.com/RP_Search.jsp?search_type=Assessment

You can find instructions on how to appeal here:

http://otr.cfo.dc.gov/otr/cwp/view,a,1330,q,594366,otrNav_gid,1679,otrNav,|33280|.asp

Can anyone who successfully appealed provide practical advice on what type of evidence to include in the appeal. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a PACER equivalent for tax assessment dockets to pull examples from.

Thanks Anon 3:37. This is helpful, although a bit frustrating since we closed on our condo over 5 months ago and it’s still in the developer’s name. In addition, our assessment more than doubled! I assume this is because the last time it was assessed the building was under construction (part of City Vista) but still a bit unnerving. Also it currently says there is no Homestead Exemption applied, but if this is our primary residence we should be eligible, right?
And am I understanding properly that the maximum amount your taxes can increase is 10% per year? (http://otr.cfo.dc.gov/otr/cwp/view,a,1330,q,594289.asp)

Kimberly: refile your homestead exemption, see this earlier post on the subject.

Also, the cap on your tax increase applies only to the tax bill. Your assessed value can go up much more, but your actual bill amount can only go up by a certain percentage.

we had one comment submitted asking about tax abatements on two specific buildings downtown. some condos downtown do have tax abatements in place for multi-year periods that reduces but does not eliminate taxes during the eligibility period. we recommend contacting your condo board, condo management, a trusted realtor who really knows downtown or DC’s OTR to discover that information, its applicability and how it all works. the aforementioned program is not the same as DC’s Lower Income Home Ownership Tax Abatement program.

if you want a feel for how a tax abatement program works, check out this fiscal impact statement on DC’s proposed 2009 NoMa residential tax abatement from Natwar Gandhi, DC’s CFO [PDF file].

questions about our comment policy can be directed to our mailbag at: pqliving [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can also use your neighbors as a basis for appeal. when you look up your record on the OTR site, you can find all of the records for your neighbors by only entering the square number. sq footage should be listed. you can also look up recent sales the same way.

and certainly a recent appraisal is excellent hard evidence.