(Moderator please post this for everyone's information.) I believe the reason single family homes may be taxed higher is because apparently here in Pgh single family homes are worth more than rental properties and sell for more $. Pretty much anywhere else that would not be true, but I was told that by a realtor recently. I guess because the rents here tend to be low. Jessica Miller, Chislett St. --- On Fri, 3/27/09, Irina Livezeanu <irlznu@gmail.com> wrote: From: Irina Livezeanu <irlznu@gmail.com> Subject: [Highland Park] real estate taxes To: neighborhood@highlandparkpa.com Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 11:22 AM Thanks everyone for the information you sent. I'm as confused as ever. Responses ranged from "appeal and represent yourself to you must hire a lawyer, to the tongue-in-cheek". I did speak to one lawyer who suggested that I should not appeal because the process opens the appealer to possible further tax increases! The system clearly favors owners who do renovation work without work permits, i.e. illegally. The lawyer said that the whole tax system should be changed. One issue is still not clear to me--why would bigger structures with 3-4 times as much living space and rental units that bring in substantial income be taxed lower than single-family smaller houses on the same block? Here is a sampling of the responses I got: Tell them you work for AIG. We went through an assessment hike in Highland Park 10 years ago, and when we moved to Squirrel Hill, we were hit with a reassessment a year after we moved in. Both times it was shocking. I think you mail in your appeal form, and then they slowly send you back a “court date” when you can argue your case. My wife and I did a lot of research, driving around, taking pics of other houses, looking through the county website to ascertain home prices & selling dates of nearby homes that were comparable, etc. See: http://www.alleghenycounty.us/opa/ and http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Search.aspx. The latter has info on every property in the county. We documented what the county website had “wrong” about our house. We also looked at the “Comparables” they suggest on the website, and basically came up with comparables we felt were closer. If I recall, the comparables need to be homes that have sold in the last few years (5?). There are more detailed records on your house available at the County Courthouse. Each time we compiled our “argument” it was basically a set of comparables: our house is like that, which sold for this a year ago… so our house must be similar. The current downturn must make everything more difficult to judge: 5 year old data is useless. We assembled the examples and a summary in a big paper packet, and I went down there in person to argue our case. It was a bit harrowing, nervous. You basically go in to a small room and argue against a school board official, who wants to see your assessments high, and the country tax officer watches and makes a judgement, which can be appealed. I felt it was important to be clear, precise, with god evidence, and LOTS of it. Both times we “won,” and the tax hardly went up. I don’t really have evidence, but I’ve heard that if you hire someone to help you in the legal process, they treat you worse, but if you present your own evidence, it’s better. That’s all I really have: it was a bunch of work, but worth it, I guess. We appealed our county property assemesment a few years ago. If I remember right, they had wanted to raise it about 9-10 months after we had bought the house. I believe they wanted to value it at $30,000 or something more than our purchase price. Our appeal was successful on the first try. I did not have a lawyer represent us, but I think I had talked to a friend or two who was a lawyer who had given me some good advice about how to approach it. Base on that, I kept our rational for the appeal simple and reasonable, which is why I think it was successful - only took less than 30 minutes of conversation with the assesment office (once they called me for my appt). - I noted that what we paid for it less than a year ago should be considered fair market value, and a good representation of "market value" since the house was on the market for at least 9 months, maybe 12 months before we bought it. -I had clear range that I suggested/asked to have it be revalued at - I think it was a $5,000 window around our purchase price (as I will readily admit we got a good deal on our place). I was clear with the assesor that I had no intention of trying to get them to value it for less than what we had just paid for it. -I think I did bring in information on comprables we had used when putting together our offer to buy the house, and comprables for the county website, so that I was prepared with that information. Again, I stuck with comprables that were truly comprable and in the range we were looking to be assesed with. -I had documentation to back up what I was suggesting - our offer on the house, my notes on the market history of the place, etc. I don't think they really looked that closly at it but having that helped point out that I had a pretty straightforward reason to suggest the assesment rate be changed. My experience was that as long as you are reasonable in your dealings with them, you'll get a good response. If you aren't suggesting something "reasonable" they aren't going to go for it, and honestly, there is no reason they should considering that they should aim to be "fair" to everyone. In your case, if they increase they are suggesting is more than the improvements you have made, I would suggest that you approach them with a goal of bringing the increase back down to original assesment plus what you've invested in the improvements (taking depreciation of those improvements and the actual increase in sale price into account). If the work was not improvement work, but was more of a substantial repair work, like fixing the foundation, I would think you could state that "maintaining" the condition of the house would bea good justification for either maintaining the current assesment rate or going up only a moderate amount. If you did not increase your square footage substantially because of this work, that is an important point to make, as I've had friends who had their assesment change because of square footage being calculated wrong after they'd had some work done that required a building permit. Making existing improvements to the current structure without adding square footage should be less of a reason to increase your assement value. As far as I understand it (not well) they have to use the 2002 assessed value.... Your argument is "The law states that the base year for assessments is 2005" End of story. You might also want to check the assessment on every house on your block/street, pick the conditions that are similar to yours, and see what their assessments are. The best strategy I have heard of, and that worked, is to look at houses in the area that are comparable to yours and see what the taxes are for these. A friend of mine did this and found that the taxes were all over the place. Some houses that were comps had higher taxes, some had lower. There was no rhyme or reason to the tax structure. Armed with this information in a Powerpoint presentation, he argued that because there were no standards, raising his taxes amounted to discriminating against him. His taxes stayed the same! The only suggestion I have is for her to get an independent appraisal that would conflict with the tax increase.? It probably depends on what kind of work she had done.? I.e., an addition vs. a remodel, etc. Hey Irina: don't do this yourself, get a lawyer who specializes in it. We did that a few years ago when our assessment got raised. Didn't have to do anything (not even show up at the hearing) and got a nice reduction in our assessment. The deal we had with that guy was that his fee would be half of our first-year tax savings, which amounted to a few hundred bucks IIRC. So it was pretty painless from the wallet standpoint too. You hire an appraiser (costs a few hundred $) and go to your appeal with the appraisal. BUT, let them go FIRST. If their appraisal is lower than yours, just accept it - that's what happened to me. I tried a few years back to fight an assessment by myself and lost. I then had an appeal scheduled for our home on Jackson Street. I got a call from Jim Uhler (who I didn't know) because he saw that I was scheduled and had no representation. I signed a paper, didn't go to the appeal, and had our assessment lowered substantially. The fee was 1/2 of the reduction in the assessment for the year. (our taxes dropped $2,000/year, so I paid $1,000 for the appeal). This guy is not a lawyer, but he knows what he's doing. I have given him info three rental properties I own to try to lower the assessment this year. -----Inline Attachment Follows----- -- <http://lists.highlandparkpa.com/mailman/listinfo/neighborhood>