If you live in the Greater Sacramento Region and you’re wondering how to lower your property taxes, you’ve come to the right place. Here is my advice though. Before you make a decision to hire someone to help you reduce your property taxes (including my tax appeal company), wait until new assessments come out to determine if there is a real savings to be had. If you live in Sacramento or Placer County, for example, the Assessor has not yet posted their latest assessments yet, so it doesn’t make much sense to dispute your taxes until you know what their assessment is going to be for 2010.

Why am I telling you this? Because I am committed to being honest with you about the property tax appeals process and how you can save money. If it looks like the Assessor has your value wrong, I am glad to partner with you to help the Assessor understand true market value. My company’s fees are very reasonable too. On the other hand, if it looks like the Assessor has your property assessed accurately, you don’t need to do a thing.

If you want me to send you an email reminder when new assessments come out, click “contact” in the upper right hand corner of my tax appeal website, and I’ll get in touch with you soon. For now, if you have any questions about appealing your property taxes, or if there is anything I can do for you, let me know. Thank you.

By the way, the Sacramento County Assessor’s Office typically publishes their new assessments in the month of May, but right now they are expecting to get this information out at the very beginning of July. You can expect Placer County to get their information out in July also.

Sacramento Region Property Tax Appeals
TEL: 916.595.3735
FAX: 916.361.1964
www.SacramentoTaxAppeals.com
info@SacramentoTaxAppeals.com

NOTE: This advice is good for a traditional “decline in value” tax appeal only (it’s not applicable to a base year appeal or calamity reassessment….).

It’s interesting to see how people find my website. I am able to see basic data every day for how readers get here. I only see the words people type in search engines – nothing more. I wanted to provide a bit more information for readers below from a few of the most recent search results:

“getting your house appraised for a loan”

Answer:  I don’t know exactly where you were going with this, but I’ll take a stab. For mostly any loan you will need a real estate appraisal (and therefore a real estate appraiser to inspect your property). Most of the time these days you will not be able to choose your own appraiser due to HVCC – see below (unless doing an FHA loan or a loan not affiliated with Fannie Mae). People ask me all the time what they should do to prepare for an appraiser to come to their home. Other than being greeted with fresh cookies, hot coffee and biscotti (just kidding), it’s not a bad idea to have your house semi-clean and make sure that the appraiser will have access to each room. If the appraiser cannot observe all rooms and spaces within the house and on the property, then there is a good chance the appraiser will have to come back for another inspection.

“date HVCC went into effect”

Answer:  May 1, 2009. To read more about HVCC, click HERE. “HVCC” stands for the “Home Valuation Code of Conduct” and there have been quite a few articles lately on the subject.

“FHA appraisal interior cracks”

Answer:  FHA appraisals are the rage in the marketplace right now. From a lending standpoint there are different guidelines for FHA loans as opposed to conventional loans geared toward Fannie Mae. This of course means that FHA qualified appraisers are mandated to follow certain standards set forth by HUD. Do interior cracks matter to HUD? Well, what do they look like? How big are they? Where do they come from? Could these cracks suggest a lack of structural integrity or are they simply evidence of an older house and/or depreciation? This is not an easy question to answer without observing the property personally. HUD is primarily concerned with safety, soundness and security, and so if there are any issues with the property that might compromise safety, soundness or security (or any of the very specific minimum requirements HUD has laid out), then the cracks could be something warranting further investigation. But then again, they could be no big deal at all.

“Rocklin Tax Assessor”

Answer:  People find this website on a daily basis by searching for items such as “Rocklin Tax Assessor,” “Rancho Cordova property taxes”, “Fair Oaks taxes” and more. Keep in mind that our local cities do not collect property taxes from us. The county in which the property is located handles property tax assessment and collection. In the case of Rocklin, that would be the Placer County Assessor. If you do happen to need help disputing your property taxes, you are invited to poke around our property tax appeal website HERE.

I hope these brief answers were helpful. I’ll continue to answer questions I find from search engine results, but I am more than happy to answer questions via email or phone too.

www.SacramentoAppraisalBlog.com Search Engine Answers from the Sacramento Appraisal Blog

The deadline for contesting property taxes in Placer County is September 15, 2009. This means that if you are intent to appeal the assessed value on your property, that you will need to turn in the Application for Changed Assessment as well as evidence for a lowered opinion of value at some point between July 2, 2009 and September 15, 2009. You also have the option to fill out the Decline in Value Reassessment Application, but I highly recommend that home owners not fill this out because this application is NOT an appeal. The Decline in Value form does not have any real power of appeal and so if you choose to only fill out the Decline in Value form and the deadline passes for appealing property taxes, then there is nothing more you can do to contest property taxes for the year. This happens to home owners every year and so I hope now that it does not happen to any readers of this blog.

The Assessor’s Office in Placer County says they will mail property owners a letter in July 2009 if the owner’s property experienced a decline in value over the past year that impacts the level of property taxes.

Placer County Links:

• Placer County Assessor’s Office
• Placer County Website
• Placer County on Wikipedia
• Placer County Library
• Placer County Office of Education

If you have questions about the process of appealing property taxes in Placer County or any other surrounding county, give us a call at 916-595-3735. We are happy to help Placer County home owners understand what you need to do as well as how we can help you. We are a local company that knows the local real easte market well. We do have a main property tax website at www.SacramentoTaxAppeals.com also and you may find further helpful information there.