Chris Little was appointed to the American River Parkway Advisory Committee in 2007 by the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, and was also appointed to the 65th Street Redevelopment Advisory Committee in 2008. He received the Civic Affairs Award from the Sacramento Association of Realtors for community service, and he has been a Director through the Sacramento Association of Realtors since 2009 (and he’s the current 2012 President-Elect). I mention these things because community service is extremely important to me, and Chris is a great example. Catch up with Chris Little at 916-698-1961, www.ChrisLittleSells.com or Twitter.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

NOTE: In quite a few cases the “comps” provided by real estate agents are really not all that “comparable” to the subject property. It can be valuable when agents share their market insight with appraisers, but my advice to agents is to make sure the sales really are comparable and located in the same market area. This comes back to the difference between a property that is truly competitive / comparable (“comp”) to the subject and a sale that meets a certain price level.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

What do you think? Have you seen something similar? Why do you think inventory has been down?

By the way, this video marks the debut of my beardless look for 2012. I suppose it’s a resolution of sorts, but I decided it was time for my “distinguished” beard color to go away – at least for this year. Since shaving the gray, not one person has said, “Ryan, you really shouldn’t have done that,” so I know it was the right season to let the razor win. I know you don’t come here to hear about my face, but I just wanted to put this out there publicly so there is some internet accountability in case you see a beard creep back into my life this year.  Anyone make a similar resolution?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Two reasons to AVOID paying someone to reduce your property taxes before July:

1) Assessments are Published in June or July: The Assessor historically doesn’t publish their assessed values until the second quarter of 2012. Every year tax companies send mailers in the early part of the year promising to reduce property taxes, but how can they offer to reduce your property taxes in February or March if they don’t even know your assessed value? Moreover, the Assessor does actually review property taxes and they might catch your overassessed value and correct that before their assessments are posted. Again, why pay someone if the Assessor could potentially get it right anyway? Ultimately a company can easily claim they “helped” you when in fact the Assessor simply got your value right and would have adjusted it regardless of the “help” you received.

2) The Appeals Period is July to November: The formal period to dispute your property taxes is between July 2 to November 30 of any given year for most counties surrounding Sacramento (besides Placer, which is July 2 to mid-September). Why hire a company in March when the company cannot formally dispute your taxes until July? First see what the Assessor says your property is worth and then make a decision about whether to appeal or not once you see your property’s value. The value should be based on January 1, by the way.

Here is a video with the same information above if you wish to listen instead:

I know a post like this sounds very self-serving since I run a property tax appeal company, but this is truly about honest business and providing good tips to save money. I sincerely want property owners to not be taken advantage of as I mentioned above.

What should you do? The best case scenario is for you to wait to see how the Assessor values your property for 2012. If the value looks too high come June or July 2012, and you don’t know how to provide support to show a realistic value, then hire a reputable company to handle it for you. If you want an email reminder when property assessments in Sacramento County are released, click here to fill out the form on the sidebar and I’ll send you an email reminder so you can remember to check your property taxes come July 2012.

Was that helpful? I hope so.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I’d like to hear about your situation with a “low” appraisal and what you did about it. How did the appraisal impact your deal?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

If you said yes for being a safety issue called out in an FHA appraisal report, you are correct. FHA is primarily concerned that everything in a house works properly, there are no health and safety issues and there is a sense of economic longevity for the house too. Had I continued the video for a bit longer, you would’ve seen the fan shake even harder. If you don’t think it’s a safety issue, would you put your child’s bed underneath a fan like this? Probably not.

While an issue like this needs to be corrected before an FHA loan can be guaranteed, it’s really not a big-ticket item. Either the fan needs to be repaired or replaced or a cheap light fixture can be purchased and installed in its place. This is an older property and ceiling fans didn’t even exist when the property was built, so a simple light fixture is entirely reasonable in this case. This is not just my opinion either, but the Santa Ana FHA Home Ownership Center said the same thing during a recent phone conversation.

NOTE: This does not mean all wobbly ceiling fans will need to be repaired or replaced. This is where the FHA appraiser is subjective and has to use good judgment according to FHA guidelines and/or the spirit of FHA.

Let me know if you have any questions or insight. I hope this was helpful. You can see more FHA appraisal articles here.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

As shown in the video, I found the “pool cover” to be an inventive way to help avoid the safety risk of an empty pool and maybe avoid damage from skateboarding too. This cover was already on the property when it was purchased. What other ways have you seen a pool ”secured” when there is no water?

Offering appraisal services to investors is one of my favorite roles because I enjoy seeing the “before” and “after” product as well as working outside of the scope of appraisals geared toward Fannie Mae. I am not doing any appraisal-related work on this particular house, but in other cases investors will order an appraisal from my company in order to do the following: 1) Present the appraisal to the funding source to secure capital for the project; 2) Use the appraisal as a part of a federal or state rehab program (particular programs simply require an appraisal); 3) Use the appraisal for marketing purposes to include in MLS for buyers and agents (or to get an idea of the “after improved” value for listing purposes).

I hope you enjoyed the brief video. Let me know if you have any questions.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Any thoughts or questions?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

If you want to understand what we did a bit more and how we did it, feel free to watch the video below of the ribbon cutting ceremony, and make sure to check out my friend Andy Gee’s photos of the event. It’s great to see residents come together to solve an issue and I’m very proud to have been a part of a team of doers to bring results where they were needed.

Improving a neighborhood happens when we get intentional together. It’s about placing our focus on solving problems and building relationships instead of fences. It’s about recapturing a mindset to be available to other residents in the community. So when we begin to do small things like wave to passersby, get stuck in conversation with neighbors, introduce ourselves to someone who just moved in, BBQ in the front yard, or even hang up lights during the holidays, we are adding life to the community. Sure, there will be a time and place for big projects, but most of the strength of a community is not found in big events, but in the small daily interactions we all have.

Why do you think many neighborhoods have grown more isolated over the years?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Any other insight or thoughts about the affect of distressed sales?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

What do you think?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

While it might feel normal to be isolated from neighbors these days, a community is really only as strong and deep as its communication. Isolation simply does not work well for neighborhoods over the long haul no matter what the economics and demographics are for a community. This doesn’t mean we all need to be extraverted best friends, but only that a lack of communication will increase the likelihood of neighborhood decay.

This is very real to me because I believe philosophically in the ideas mentioned above, and I am also a practitioner. Last Saturday I was able to partner with residents in my neighborhood to plan a clean-up for a stretch of county-owned land near Light Rail tracks. There were 25 or so neighbors, and in just a few short hours we built a fence and spruced up a patch of land that needed some loving. The result? This cleaned-up site can now be a catalyst for pride, and is a small win for neighborhood residents, the surrounding community and even property values.

What do you think sometimes hinders residents from working together to deal with neighborhood issues?

Community Building 101: In case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called “Community Building 101″ a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me now what you think. Download HERE (pdf).

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

What do you think? Any questions or insight?

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.