Your property taxes are based in large part on the government’s assessment of the value of your property. Thus, in order to reduce your property taxes, you need to convince the government that its assessment of your property’s value was inaccurately high.
In general, it is most promising to appeal property taxes when property values in your area have fallen in recent years. Why? Because the main factor governments use in assessing the value of a home is the sale price of similar homes in the last several—most often three—years. If they see that homes like yours in your neighborhood have sold in the recent past in the range of, say, $400,000 to $440,000, they’ll likely assess yours somewhere around $420,000.
But what if home values are dropping in your area, such that the house or houses that sold for $440,000 in the above example were three years ago, and the houses that sold in the last year or so were closer to the $400,000 end of that range? In that case we’d expect your home to sell for $400,000 today, or even lower if the trend is continuing, not $420,000. Make this case when you appeal your property’s assessment, and you may well get it lowered to $400,000.
But that’s not to say that the only reason to appeal your property taxes would be if property values in your area have been falling significantly recently. Let’s say instead that values have been roughly stable, with the houses deemed comparable by the government selling in recent years in that $400,000-$440,000 range. You could challenge the assessment by providing evidence that some of those homes that sold for $430,000 or $435,000 or $440,000 really aren’t that similar to yours, that yours is inferior in certain respects. Or you could show that in addition to these houses, there were houses at least as similar to yours that sold in recent years for $380,000 or $390,000 that were left out of the calculations.
It’s also worth looking over the property assessment you receive to check it for simple factual errors. Does it state that your home has three bedrooms when in fact it has two? Does it state that your home is 3,000 square feet when in fact it’s 2,800? Material errors such as these are relevant to the value of property and can certainly be raised in an appeal.
The mistake that some people make in attempting such an appeal is to cite their personal financial circumstances that make it a hardship to pay the property tax, or even to argue that property taxes in general are unfairly high. But a property tax appeal is not the occasion to make an emotional plea about your struggles to pay your taxes and keep your home, nor to argue politics. What the government wants to know from your appeal is “Did we assess your property’s value inaccurately?” To this, you have to make the case that “Yes, the assessment is inaccurately high.” Don’t stray from that point.
Don’t think of a property tax assessment as the last word. There are many grounds upon which you can appeal such an assessment and potentially lower your property taxes.