So I got a letter from wake county revenue a few days ago and my tax value for my house went up.
By up, I mean 20k more than what I paid. Is this a good thing in terms of resale? Is my house really worth that much or does this just mean I will be paying more per month in taxes and my house still has similar value compared to what I paid?

3/9/2010 5:44:36 PM

It means more taxes. Sales data from your neighborhood is what sets the market price as far as most potential buyers are concerned.

3/9/2010 5:46:45 PM

^that

3/9/2010 5:49:53 PM

i don't know about wake county, but in my county you can appeal and get it lowered if you feel if you don't agree with the new assessment. which reminds me i need to find that info and send it in.

3/9/2010 6:02:59 PM

You can appeal in Wake County as well.

3/9/2010 7:00:21 PM

you need to look at what comparable houses in your area are selling for, which is usually part of an actual appraisal.


[Edited on March 9, 2010 at 7:39 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2010 7:37:04 PM

Mine went up 5K a year ago. I got it lowered by 20K.

People talk it up a lot as if tax value == market value which is not true. Just b/c you are taxed at that doesn't mean you could sell it for that.

3/10/2010 4:52:31 PM

^No I didn't think that's how it worked. But it has to be somewhat of a good thing to see my real estate value go up....right?

3/10/2010 5:04:54 PM

yes.


except your real estate value did not go up.

your tax value went up. It's actually not your tax value. It's Wake County's tax value. All it means is that you have to pay more. Now, they try to claim that there is a direct correlation between the tax value and the actual value of the house, but in reality, they just want to squeeze you for as much money as they can. It's extremely doubtful that the actual value of your home went up by 20k.

3/10/2010 5:13:50 PM

If your tax value = your market value, then yeah, that'd be comforting i guess. All a higher tax value really means for you, though, is that you will be paying more in taxes.

3/10/2010 5:15:07 PM

^^ /thread.

3/10/2010 5:15:29 PM

I tried disputing my tax value and I can't imagine anyone would have a more legitimate case than I had. I looked at the sales records for ~100 homes in my hood and the surrounding hoods in the 6 months surrounding our purchase within +-30% of our sale price and my homes tax value was higher percentage wise than any other home I looked at and in most instances by a lot.

Particularly, they had my neighborhood really screwed up where the smaller homes (like mine) were subsiding the tax values of larger homes. The majority of the smaller homes had tax values much higher and the majority of the bigger homes had values at their sale price or in some instances 5-8% lower. Other neighborhoods in my area (Holt and 55) didn't seem to have this disparity because their neighborhoods were more homogeneous as far as house size went.

I produced all this data to one of the tax assessors that handles appeals and said that I'd love to hear his case for how the assessment of values in my neighborhood was at all accurate and that I'd like to see mine adjusted accordingly. He tweaked it down by .5% I suppose to try and get me to go away and said that the values for the neighborhood did look off but there wasn't anything he could to reassess an entire neighborhood outside of the planned periods for assessment and since he couldn't do that he couldn't adjust mine to the "proper" value.

I ended up moving before taking the appeal to the next level.

It really makes no sense to not fix the values any time the property sales and then you only have to assess homes that haven't sold in the past 8 (or 4 if that is the period) years for their new value. Stupid stupid government.

3/10/2010 5:34:43 PM

It sounds like you didn't go through a formal appeal. If you had and it had been rejected you have the right to make a second appeal which I eventually had to do to get it reduced. At least that's how things worked in Durham.

3/10/2010 5:46:28 PM

Quote :

"It really makes no sense to not fix the values any time the property sales and then you only have to assess homes that haven't sold in the past 8 (or 4 if that is the period) years for their new value. Stupid stupid government."

yes, this would be the fairest way to do it.

3/10/2010 6:07:34 PM